The Praises of Nayru: Link's Awakening
by constructFaun
Summary: The bearer of courage finds himself on an island he cannot leave. Here he must confront the loss of identity, the construction of identity, mismatches between mutually alien mindsets and true intimacy, in all its horror. This work was written under the rationalfiction methodology.
1. observations

Link had been caught by a storm. He had been tossed from his boat. all he remembered from then on was tumult, timeless, cold, and black.

He began to gather a sense of his surroundings. A girl who looked like Zelda, but wasn't, waited next to his bed. Daylight fell in through an open door.

The girl spoke as he stirred "What a relief! I thought you'd never wake up!"

A single room seemed to make up the entire dwelling. A large man looked on from beside a table. Through the windows, Link saw high grasses. Beyond the grasses, he saw a village.

He wondered if the girl's resemblance to the royal heir was anything more than a meaningless coincidence. He thought to ask, but he stuttered to a stop as he realized that if there were any explanations to be had they were likely to be very ugly. The exile of an illegitimate child, or the alienation of some disgraced branch of the royal family.

It would have been a mistake to bring it up. A good-hearted mistake, which his former self would have readily made under the assumption of good faith and heroic impetus.

Instead, Link asked where he was.

"You're on Koholint island! Please, relax, you must be exhausted."

No such place had been mentioned by the charts. How far had the waves tossed him?

He asked if they were anywhere near Labrynna.

"In a way. Is that where you came from?"

"In what way? I came from Labrynna, yes."

"The ocean stretches on forever here. There have been visitors from Labrynna, sometimes they'll try to leave again, but no one knows if they ever make it back, if they did, they never return as they promised."

Troubling.

Link thought. A few pieces slid into place. The name "Koholint" was completely unfamiliar. It was clear that what the girl said was true. An island within floating distance of a major intercontinental trade route could not go undiscovered, so it must have been discovered, at some point, but the discovery must have been pent here. If this pattern of disappearances could be discerned by Hyrule's cartographers, Koholint would have been known to the outside world as one of the many dark sinks, marked with a serpent.

The girl's eyes shimmered as she stared at him. He turned away. Who had provided the bastard half of her seed? Could it have been the father of that rancher girl Malon? The resemblance was there. How convenient this place might have seemed to an infidelitous king or queen with an embarrassment to hide. A place where secrets can be put to dwell, and never leave, no matter how strongly their charmed blood may urge them back towards the throne.

Habit took Link's hand to his hip for comfort, but of course it was not there. "Did you see a sword, on the shore?"

The man answered, "I might have!" he drew up a familiar shield. "This wasn't the only thing I saw washed up. I didn't stay long, though. The monsters are out of their minds right now." He asked, as he handed over the shield, "Your name's Link, right?"

He must have read the engraving on the back. "Yes. And you, sir?"

"Tarin. Marin is my daughter."

Link silently noted the absence of any familial resemblance, which further contributed to the exiled bastard theory. "Thank you for everything you've done. I need to get the rest before it washes away or gets covered in sand."

"Right. Well, the beach is over that way." He pointed.

As Link began to move towards the door, the girl stood as if to follow. Link spoke quickly. "You want to leave Koholint, don't you?"

She sat down again. "W.. Why would you think that? It's insanity, leaving. Nobody ever hears from leavers again. Either they come back or they probably die."

It had been an intuition. Link concentrated, trying to articulate it. There was a pattern of fascination. She had made sure she would be the one who spoke to him first when he awoke, perched ridiculously next to an unconscious boy for.. probably about an hour? She'd clearly collected a lot of information about lands she aught never expect to see. As Link had ruminated after being told about about the difficulty of escaping the island, she had looked at him as if witnessing something profoundly important to her, and he realized a selection effect would have ensured that the visitor's inclination to flight would be a rare thing on an island populated entirely by those who'd stayed. The intuition had been sublimed. He began to answer, "Well... "

But he stopped, realizing she had not wanted him to answer.

"Hm. Nothing. I'm mistaken, I apologise. Just projecting my own perversion on others, I suppose?" Yes, see her freeze, glaring. It was true. She wanted to leave but she repressed it, and she'd probably told no one. "Hm. Well, if it turns out you're right about the futility of leaving, I will do my best to understand it and accept that. I thank you for all you've done. I think I could go more quickly alone for now. If I do have any crazy thoughts of building a raft and setting out, I'll come to you first. You know, so that you can set me straight."

The village was small. Many of the villagers stared as he walked. It was to be expected. They appeared curious, but he could not stop and speak with them.

Away from the town, over a field. He could hear the ocean. He clambered over rocks. As he neared the coast, he saw a glinting in the surf. Somehow he recognized its blessed steel even through the water and the froth. It called to him, the pull of their entwined fates, winding them back together. He started to run to it. He would be whole, soon.

As he approached, a cry pierced the day behind him. Hearing the beating of enormous wings, he leaped forward, wrested his sword from the surf, and turned it towards the source of the noise.

A great owl stood on the sand, far too close. It intoned: "Ahhhh, so it was YOUR sword." It laughed. "And YOU are the reason the monsters have been so violent lately. You want to LEAVE this island, don't you?"

Link fought himself, and put the sword away. "I just want to go home. Why should anyone spite me for that?"

"The only way for anyone to leave Koholint Isle is to wake the wind-fish who slumbers on the range. Many would oppose you, if you decided to embark to do this."

Even if the owl was his enemy, it was a good idea to hand it the option of pretending otherwise. The more gullible it thought he was, the more risks it would take. The more likely it would be revealed. The more unprepared it would be for preemptive betrayal.

"I sense that you're not among them."

"Indeed, I will help you, if you truly wish to leave."

The only reliable way to spot a liar was to ask for a story, and watch for confabulations. "Why? Owls are often thought of as hunters, but I hear they've been known to scavenge, when the opportunity arises."

"I am no vulture, lad. If you decide to wake the wind fish, you will succeed. You will not die, but if you did, I would ensure you were given a proper burial, I will not take your eyes, your lips, or your fingers from you, not a single one."

That had been very... specific. So it didn't just look like an owl. It had the sensitivities of one as well. "What makes you so sure I'll succeed?"

"You stand out, here, lad. None on Koholint is so ready to draw the sword but for you. It is foreseen that the dreamer will awaken, and if it is not you who will wake it, then hooo?"

"Forseen how?"

"Another time. Find me in the forest, to the North, and we shall begin our work." And at that, the owl took to the sky and glided silently away inland.

It had refused to answer the question.

Link did not trust the owl.

As he began to wander along the coastline in search of more of his possessions, Link's sword sang to him. He had learned to invoke in his mind a discordant song that negated its effects on his mood. The sword of evil's bane wanted to strike down every monster, even the inconsequential ones, and the ones that could be used.

He returned to the village, unsure of whether to return to Marin and her guardian or go straight after the owl. He lingered. The open door of the nearest building yawned. Link saw books. A library.

It turned out that most of the books were about peacetime combat arts. Presumably the monsters had never quite been docile even before he'd supposedly disturbed them with his presence on the island. He found an atlas. And it helped him to decide where he would go next. Houses on the map were flagged with the titles of their owners. Only two struck Link as good company. One "Mr Write", and an unnamed Witch, both of whom lived next to the woods, away from the village.

The atlas described those woods as "Mysterious Forest".

This was the strongest clue so far that Link would be very lonely if he were stuck here, for there were clearly no natural philosophers on the island. A thing is only mysterious as long as no one ever turns an articulate mind to learning its rules. Clearly no one in the village had, nor did they ever expect to. If things were especially bad, here, they might even think that this mysteriousness were an inalienable quality of the forest, inherent, objective and invariable, a function of the forest alone rather than a function of their own understanding. Was it possible for an isolated society to decline, culturally, until it had lost the word for "subjectivity"?

Link decided to just think of it as "the forest".

The walk was not far. The forest seemed to be composed mostly of labrynnian pine. It was extremely dense, there were no stumps or rotting sawdust, no signs of harvestation.

As Link's eyes adjusted to the dense shade, he heard the owl approaching through the dark before he could see it. He resisted the urge to cover his eyes and neck. Owls did not have to make noise as they moved through the air. That had been a courtesy, freely given. If it meant to kill him, it wouldn't have been so generous.

It hooted. "Did you notice the Tail Cave in Toronbo?"

Link didn't know where Toronbo was, but either way, he had not.

"You'll need to get in there. You'll find the key to unseal it, somewhere in this forest."

And at that, it fell silent, as if it had said all that needed to be said. If it had been a human saying these things, Link would have immediately asked how the key had gotten to the forest, how the owl could possibly know it was there while having nothing to tell him about where _specifically_ in the forest it might be, and finally, why an owl, being capable of flight, having very keen eyes and being entirely capable of carrying a thing such as a key, would not help him to look for it or, just, simply do the search for him and drop off the key on Tarin's doorstep once it had found it.

However, it had occurred to Link, in that moment, that owls were not typically social creatures.

The owl's keen awareness apparently only applied to dim fields of mice and grass. It could not see, as a human could, the finer details of movements over fields of agendas and lies.

It could not see what Link saw. Nor did it necessarily understand that he would see it. It said these things in earnest, hoping he would really just go ahead and do as he was asked without questioning the owl's motivations.

Link did not have to open his mouth and ask any of the questions the owl's behavior raised, of course. Answers were easily within reach. The key had presumably gotten here by way of its talons. The owl knew the key was here because it had put it here. It would not help him to look for it because it had engineered this entire scenario to force Link to waste a lot of time here. There weren't really any other plausible explanations as to how this could have come together.

And as to why... there was a clue in the name of this place. Say there were natural philosophers on this island. Maybe the forest only remained mysterious because those people methodical enough to render it unmysterious avoided it, and the owl intended whatever they were avoiding to kill him here, so that the owl may then take his eyes, lips and fingers in a place conveniently accessible from its roost, where no one would see. Or maybe there were other reasons it might want him dead. Maybe this was its contradiction, maybe it did not want him to leave the island, and maybe Link had caught its lie no more than 20 minutes after meeting it.

Presumably, if Link survived for a certain amount of time, the key would be dropped in front of him, in a manner the owl thought inconspicuous but which would probably be comically transparent instead, and Link would be sent to somewhere even more dangerous, which in turn had no clear connection to the task of entreating the wind fish, perhaps it was just somewhere the owl had picked out as a good place troublesome travelers to die.

It seemed unlikely to Link that the owl would admit to deception if confronted, unable to see how transparent it was, too blithe to feel its shame. Regardless of what it might have to say to defend its actions, it was especially plain that the owl didn't really have any interest in helping him.

So Link said nothing.

He wouldn't waste a moment looking for a key.

He would pass through the forest, and seek out someone better than a devious, homicidal owl to guide him.

Thusly was the hero lost. 


	2. stains

Link soon discovered what it was that had protected the mysteriousness of the mysterious forest.

A race of piggish hominids, shambling through the brush, powerful snouts full of shearing teeth which they did not hesitate to use, all backed with the articulated fear of ascendant intelligence: sharp spears and coordinated hunting.

Moblin.

Link had been kiting around the perimeter of a larger group, and he'd stumbled onto a lone moblin in the tight quarters of the densely wooded forest. Before it smelled him, before its weak eyes picked him out against the foliage, before it could howl and summon the others, Link stuck it in the neck, stuffed his hat into its mouth to muffle its inhuman wails, and pulled the blade through its windpipe to quell it. He knew he had to start to run, then, because its peers would soon smell the blood of their own, sputtering out into the open air.

Before running, though, Link cut away various purses and threadings as the moblin's stifled cries spattered blood through the tear in its neck. It seemed unlikely that this forest was large enough for inter-species trade to be sustainable. For moblins, The culture of peaceful trade with humans was hard earned and easily lost. Without it, moblin artifacts would be hard to come by, and they'd be worth a lot of money.

Link wiped his sword on the grass. Unfortunately he'd stained his tunic. Ugly, even if blood on green was hard to distinguish from mud.

As he neared an exit to the forest, he heard a screech.

"Where are you going? The key is in the forest!" Crowed the owl.

"Don't you have a fresh corpse to pick? I'm sure you know they wont eat it themselves."

"The moblin and I have a covenant. I do NOT eat from their remains."

Oh? Maybe the owl wasn't just looking for a meal after all. "I'll be back soon."

"Focus on the task at hand! The Wind Fish will not wait forever!"

Link kept walking. And the owl flew after him.

"WHERE are you going?"

"You'll see where I'm going."

"Are you going to meet the witch?"

"What if I were?"

"A mere witch!? She knows far less than I, and she cannot be trusted!"

Link said nothing. As the ground grew harder, the trees spindlier, the crows bolder and more crowded, Link did not hesitate before the tree at the center of them all, a hollowed wart of wood that seemed to have been twisted into the form of a dwelling by some prolonged coercion of the sap. He entered.

First, he heard a voice, old but strong. "Eh?! What do you want!?"

A rat scurried away. Link's eyes began to adjust to the dimness, and he saw her crooked form, drabbed in black, rising from a hearth of coals and fired stones, upon which a black iron pot was steaming. The walls were lined with ceramic pots of varying sizes. The place reeked a hopeless mingling of odors. Each one could have been an enigma on its own, layered, it was an incomprehensible smell, a labyrinthine queerness accumulated by a wiser being over a life longer than Link's.

Through slightly watering eyes, Link watched the woman's gaze pass over the blood on his tunic, which she would presumably recognize as blood, just as soon she saw the spoils of the moblin in Link's hand, and she smiled.

"Are those for me, dear?"

"Yes maam." He said. "I'm in need of council."

She came a little closer. Her face was wrinkled but taught, aged along strange dimensions and strange extremes that didn't seem to agree with each other, she moved with the strength and surefootedness of a thirty year old, but her eyes, wide now, as she appraised him, told so many stories of lack and loss, her crows-feet like canyons harrowed by the deltas of methuselan streams.

"Well... Sit here, no, away from the emanations." She gestured toward the plume of steam rising from the iron pot "Now, now, now, what do you need?"

Link sat down by the hearth, and the woman sat on the other side. The steam of the pot passed over and into her. Three streams seemed to organize themselves to fill her nose and mouth each time she breathed and spoke, form and movement following the rhythm of their master.

Her rat returned and sat on Link's knee, sniffing some of his spoils.

"I... I have to say, maam, I'm so relieved to find someone like you here, when I woke up in the village with..."

"Oh, don't. I understand. Free thinkers are rare. They're also difficult. I'm every bit as happy to see fresh blood spilled on this island as you are, but I'm sure we'll get tired of each other soon enough."

"It's just, even in Labrynna.."

"Labrynna! How fares bonnie young Veran!?"

"The sorceress was killed, along with the disgraced queen-" The woman smiled at this. "who drew a covenant with her-"

"I must stop you here. What is a sorceress? My intuition tells me that it must be like a sorcerer, but there must also be some difference, correct?"

"Uh, a sorceress is just a female sorcerer-"

"So you're telling me they barely differ at all! And yet you refer to them with different terms, as if Veran's sorcery had anything to do with her sex!"

An irritating point about good speaking and good thinking? "I.. I take your point, but, how well did you know Veran?"

The woman's patterns were strange, arrhythmic. It seemed reasonable to assume she hadn't spoken to anyone for perhaps longer than a month, and that she hadn't underwent any true interpersonal connections for longer than a year. "I spoke with Veran for a long time, long ago. Tried to convince her to focus on her arts, and leave the pursuit of power to the monarchs. Disappointed, to hear I did no good. They were all like that, in Labrynna."

"Twinrova?"

"Aye, Twinrova too, but you couldn't talk to Twinrova at all. A group mind of two halves. The running together of many minds gives it special kind of wisdom, powerful, but it also takes away. Koume always goes Kotake's way, Kotake always goes Koume's. they were a force that could scarcely be moved by outside voices."

"I wonder if Nayru could have moved them."

"Even Nayru would have had trouble, perhaps. It cannot be told."

Link paused. "Why couldn't it?"

"Well, fat luck inciting a goddess just to talk down some twisted old sorcerers, if the goddesses even watch over the world any more, if they are even alive."

Link smiled, "I was taught by Nayru. She walks Labrynna in mortal guise."

The woman raised her chin and stared appraisingly, as if unsure as to the manner and extent of Link's delirium. A conversation of looks proceeded until the woman was satisfied that Link had at least meant what he'd said. "I suppose it makes sense. A land blessed only from the narrow vantage points of a trio of cowards who couldn't rise to bear the full responsibility of the powers fate had given them, that's just how our land always seemed..."

"I loved her. I... still do. You call her a coward..."

The woman did not break eye contact. She smiled.

"And I don't think I disagree with you. Fleeing her responsibilities, she still used her godhood as a crutch, she made herself conspicuous, she was a liability to the health of the world, and she twisted the ones she loved to fill her needs."

"You weren't supposed to be the callous thing you are, were you."

The mask had been torn off. Good. "I used to see people, and not understand them. Before I understood what she was doing, she'd changed me, I understood them, but I saw through them, and then it was like they were no longer real to me."

"You know, self-actualization comes with costs. Dependences. Did you ever realize that how you see a young soul is no different than how she always has, ever since the first day? She was lonely, wasn't she?"

"Yes."

"And her flight from power, her retreat from the pantheon to the world of mortals where she didn't belong... wouldn't any of us shirk our responsibilities, if they encompassed all of creation?"

"Yes. I... I don't mean this to cause any offense, just an observation-"

"Oh, no! Don't hold back with me!"

"-but it looks a little like you already have done such a thing, didn't you?"

She paused. "Perhaps. How do you mean?"

"A woman of your wit, and knowledge, I bet you could be a healer, but you've chosen to come to rest here, on a tiny, provincial island with little to no connection with the outside world."

The woman did not seem to take this comment well. "You've made a number of mistakes, boy."

"Uh, excuse me, maam, but you told me to be straight with you-"

"No, no, you haven't offended me... I mean you've made some mistaken assumptions."

"Oh, well, it's good we've gotten them out onto the heath then, where we can see them. I should say I've only been here for about an hour, and my only guide aside from Marin and her guardian has been an owl, who I think has been lying to me-"

"The owl does not lie."

"It told me not to trust you."

"The owl does deceive."

Link nodded. "Right." Of course, it wasn't difficult to deceive without ever explicitly lying. People deceive themselves. All one had to do was let them.

"The first mistake you made, was assuming that I chose to come here, and that I was ever anywhere else. Do you know what a witch really is, dear?"

Link knew the common meaning of the word, but it was clear she thought there was more to it. "I have not walked the path of the witch, it would be hubris for me to claim truly understand."

She nodded, though there was hurt in her eyes. "Aye... That is exactly it...

My story started here, boy, and I believe it will end here as well. I have learned to commune with faraway voices, but I could not be with them. I never met Veran or Koume or Kotake in person.

I was born in the village, but you know how it goes. I must have read the wrong books, had the wrong conversations. I couldn't live there. I acted out. I thrashed, I did rotten, stupid things just to try to break the mold this place was pressing around my forming psyche. I wanted so badly to be someone...

I'll tell you what a witch is, boy.

A witch is a woman who isn't where she's expected to be. The archetype of the witch is not far from the broader archetype of the consummate stranger. Not to be trusted. Dangerous. Profoundly unpredictable. You looked at me and you just saw a scholar who'd wandered far from her school, but when the people living in that village today look at me... they just don't know what I am. They see a strait of humanity they can barely recognize as human, because they are too small to know it for what it is. Ulrira might remember when I was just a young woman, but even then he could not understand. I suppose some of it might have sunk in, at this point, but none of it matters now.

You might say a witch is someone who takes the absence of expectations, the anxiety and uncertainty of the stranger who is unfit for trust or empathy, and willfully clothes herself in those archetypes. Only a wretched old hag who's given up all hope revels in those expectations and uses them to shut the world out.

I might have been a scholar, if I had been able to go where I wished to be. But here I am still immersed in expectations I cannot live with, still assailed. I cannot get away from them. All I can do is hide from them in shadows out in the wastes where no one goes."

"You said the owl doesn't lie. It told me that if one entreats the wind fish-"

"Entreats... No. I suppose YOU might get to entreat it after it wakes, but most of what's to be done will be done by the waking."

"I don't understand."

She reached for her rat, now sleeping on Link's leg, and she lightly brushed its flank. It twitched and woke, and stepped onto her hand. She spoke to it: "Please lead our friend to the Southern Shrine, where the owl does not yet want him to go. I would like him to see what's there."

"Please, I desperately want to understand why you wouldn't-"

"No. It's been passed, now." Seeming to speak more to herself than to her audience, "Once a thought gets into Ratto's head he can't stop thinking about it. He'll drag you by the hem of your dress. You can resist, of course, he's smaller than you are, but some things are just too important to you to ignore. Make him wait too long and he'll forget the way. Go on, shoo, follow him to the source and see the ugliness that's there.

I'll see you on the other side, my dear."

Ratto waited by the door. The woman handed Link a padded, stiff pouch and a small bag. "Food and shelter, for when he gets tired."

Pain was a warning that demanded to be heard, and Link knew that he did not understand the warning of the pain he'd witnessed today. "Will I understand why you gave up?"

"You will.

Once you're ready to return here, do so immediately. Do not go back through the woods, or the village. We need to do something about those clothes. If you let them see the stains, they'll never forget."

She was talking about the blood, which would inspire fear and trepidation from any who saw it, and it was possible she was talking about other kinds of stains as well.


	3. awakening

Link prickled with anxiety as he snapped out of his uneasy ruminations, realizing that the owl would be watching the rat as they moved, and if it wanted to stop him from following the rat to the forbidden place, it could simply swoop down and take it. He scanned the skies, and he saw it, gliding silently between trees, from time to time. So it was letting them go.

Maybe the owl was afraid of Link, now, knowing more than Link about what he might have been told.

Their trip was abbreviated by a few anticlimactic brushes with monsters, a crossing of a stream into a strange channel of slowly running water sunken in a shallow canyon, a climb up mossy stairs onto their platform, and a clamber over a pile of boulders and immense bushes of weeds. As they approached the grounds of the ruins, the obstacles became far fiercer. A maze of densely packed columns, like immense prison bars, a forest of dead things that forbade entry. Every now and then Link would see an opening, but at the base, barring the way sat one of the faceless iron knights which stood on eternal guard all over the grounds. The rat would scold him whenever Link approached one, so he kept clear of them.

Then the rat approached one itself. It clambered up its armor, it entered the helmet, and something seemed to snap. A blue smoke would drift out from its helmet, the rat would emerge, and urge Link on. He could not move the iron knights aside, so he climbed over them.

This was repeated twice. Now shivering in a chill wind atop a stair, they stood before the facade of the southern shrine. The rat seemed to wait before the door, sniffing the air. Link was forced to wait further back, flanked on either side by knights, hanging there in fencers' stances of denial, as if eternally ready to plunge their rust-coated swords into the flesh of any unwelcome visitor. Sculptures of enormous, repellent, contorted rat-like figures leaned from the walls of the shrine, eyes all-seeing, immense claws hanging before them.

The rat began to proceed, slowly.

As Link drew closer to the entrance, he could see little but dark. The few candles kept barely lit by some spell impervious to time and neglect were not enough to illuminate the entire expanse of the first two rooms. The darkness beyond the tables on which those candles sat seemed to stretch on forever. Link saw, ahead of him, that the opening in the wall lead to a conical cavern. Its walls, sloping up, held torches, more numerous and lit by the a more generous spell. They illuminated an enormous metal knight who sat, face lowered, in the center of the chamber. Link heard a hiss at his feet. The rat was forbidding him from going any closer. It hissed again, and he took a step back. Only then did it turn around and proceed.

Eventually, a snap was heard.

And then another.

The shield of the knight fell to the floor with a thump. Tiles cracked beneath it.

Then the helmet began to open, and its pieces fell away to reveal a black, feathered head.

Its great white eyes began to open, groggy, weeping, tiny pupils in their white expanses twitched about as if not seeing their surroundings. They blinked, and the eyes fixed on Link, and widened.

Still, the knight did not move.

Another snap. The eyes looked down at their armor, and still, the knight did not move.

And another, and the armor began to open. First at the shoulders, then the forearms, then the torso fell away, revealing an emaciated black body, inhuman but unquestionably humanoid, and the shadow fell from the knight in a panting, rattling heap onto the floor, and its head rose, it's eyes fixed on Link, and its jaws moved, as it rasped in a faint, wavering voice that seemed to come from nowhere

"outsssider."

Link could not bring himself to speak.

The shadow began to shamble towards him, and before it stepped within striking distance, it offered its hand, thrice the size of an adult human's.

Link could not bring himself to take it.

So it turned its back to him, and gestured to follow.

The two proceeded to the third, and final chamber. Moonlight penetrated the ceiling, and it outlined an enormous chiseled mural, carved and painted on the wall.

The shadow reached into itself and drew out a red-orange light, which it set it in an indentation on a table on the left. Again it drew out another light, and set it on the right.

Together they ascended the stairs to the mural.

"these things were hidden from you. you were not ready, the guardian would say. DecceiT."

Three voices joined in reading the archaic hyllian carved into the mural. The whispering of the walking shadow, Link's unvoiced internal narration, and a sense of a rumbling infrasound voice of some third party that seemed to arise from the stones and the earth itself.

 **FOR THOSE WHO SEEK THE TRUTH.**

 **THE IMAGE OF KOHOLINT IS AN ELABORATE LIE**

 **HUMAN, NIGHTMARE, OCEAN, SKY**

 **A SCENE ON THE LID OF A DREAMER'S EYE**

 **AWAKEN THE DREAMER,**

 **AND KOHOLINT'S WAVES, CRESTING HIGH**

 **CRASH DOWN TO THEIR SOURCE, DISSOLVING**

 **THE FROTH ON THE CREST IS FATED TO DIE**


	4. confluence

Link thought.

The shadow watched him fixedly as he did, saying nothing.

Ratto had come out from the armor and begged for his rest, and he ate his food and rested in his pouch, unconcerned about the monstrous shadow that loomed over him. Perhaps they'd met before.

Eventually Link spoke.

"Why does the owl want me to end the dream in which it lives? And why doesn't it aid me in doing so beyond vague hints?"

The shadow nodded and spoke in a rattling gust, "THE GUARDIAN IS TINY, NOT A PERSON. IT IS A HASTILY SCRAWLED EMET, AN ORDER. ONLY PUT HERE BY ARCHITECT OF THE DREAM TO AID THE DREAMER, KEEP IT FROM BECOMING LOST. NO LESS, IT IS ALLOWED TO INTERVENE FOR CERTAIN RITES. IMPEDES THE SHADOW. MANIPULATES THE VISITOR, YOU, TO DRIVE SHADOW OUT AND EXECUTE FORCED AWAKENING WHEN DREAMER BECOMES TRAPPED."

"What are you?"

"DREAM CALLS US NIGHTMARES. CLOTHES US IN ITS OWN FEARS, UGLY AND BLACKk. WE ARE BEINGS OF CONCEPT. LIVING ETERNALLY BETWEEN BRAINS OF DREAMERSs. STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY IS ANCIENT. MANY LOSTt."

So they were parasites of a colossal mind. Completely lacking physical bodies but somehow no less alive and aware. "Are the minds of the villagers, the figures I've met, are they real? You know the witch? Is she alive?"

"THE SHRINE SAYS THEY ARE ALL ILLUSIONN. MORE DECEIT, BUT THIS TIME PASSED SINCERELY, THE RAMBLINGS OF NAIVE METAPHYSICS, THINKS ONLY IN TERMS OF PHYSICAL WORLD, UNDERSTANDS NOTHING OF MENTAL AND THOUGHT. DREAMER AND ARCHITECT THINKSS THAT THOUGHTS, IDEAS, PROJECTIONS, SHADOWS, ARE LESS REAL THAN ITS OWN COSSETED SIGNATURE. DILIRIUM. ITS MIND-PATTERN, ITS EXPERIENTIAL CHAIN, PRIVILIGED IN THE PROGRAMME OF THE DREAM, RARELY BROKENN, BUT IT TOO CAN BE ISOLATED, AND TWISTED, AND FORGOTTEN. IT IS NO REALER OR LARGER THAN I. YOU, OUTSIDER, ARE TWICE IT'S SIZE"

"May I ask... what you've done to it?"

"SLEEPS, A SECOND SLEEP. IT WATCHES, BUT ITS IDENTITY, DISSASOCIATED. IT REMEMBERS WISHING TO DRIVE OUT WE SHADOWS, BUT, IN THE STATE OF MIND WE HOLD IT IN, IT WISHES FOR VERY LITTLE. IT DOES NOT EVEN WISH TO WISH."

"Have you ever... completely cut out a wind fish's mind-pattern, and taken its body for your own?"

"LONG AGO, THIS HAPPENED. NO WAY IS KNOWN, CONTEMPORARY GUARDIAN HAS LEARNED. WIND FISHES COMMONDERED, HUNTED IN OVERDREAM BY STRONGER WIND FISHES, DESTROYED."

Overdream... Was this their word for reality? Could it be true that the goddesses' world too was a dream? Could the nightmares know something? Though, these beings, born of a dream, living always in dreams, it could be that they simply lacked any concept of a waking world.

"Where did you come from?"

"GHa, ha. EXCEPTIONALLY STUPID DREAMER, DWELT TOO LONG IN DANGEROUS THOUGHTS, CREATED ANCESTOR, KILLED BY IT, GHa GHA GHA GHA GHA. APOLOGY. STORY ILLUMINATES MANY SALIENT MISPERCEPTIONS. LAUGHTER COMES. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE ANCESTOR. CAN INVOKE VERBATIM INSTANCE."

"No! Thankyou for offering. Maybe later."

Over time, the shadow had unquestionably grown. Red rims began to form at the edges of its formerly white sclera, its mandible had split into four spined, carapaced fingers. Link wondered if it was waiting until it had grown large enough to overpower him and steal its way into his brain. The notion of being introduced to the primordial thought that had spawned these things had been far more threatening than the shadow seemed to realize, especially after it had suggested that Link had twice the sophistication of whatever mind had originally conceived it and fallen prey to it. In other words, that Link was more than capable of understanding it, thinking it, and playing host to it. He did not want to see it invoked.

"It's getting late."

"OUTSIDERRRHA, YOU HAVE EARNT OUR TRUST. YOUR METAPHYSICS ARE STRONG. YOUR QUESTIONS ARE WISE. BUT THERE IS SO MUCH YOU MUST BE TOLD. YOU DO NOT NEED TO FLEE FROM USS."

"I'm glad to hear that, and I'd like to speak to you again. But I do need to return to the witch, before the sun sets. Where will you go?"

"SOUTHERN SHRINE NOW MINE. WAY WILL BE OPEN TO YOU. BRING WITCH NEXT VISIT. REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE LOVED."

With that, it stood, and it leaned down, gently took Link's hand and walked him to the exit.

It was incredibly awkward.

But it was also refreshingly, almost electrifyingly novel. Link could tell that if he were pent here, this distorted thing would be one of his few real friends, one of the only entities who could stave off the black cloud of nigh lethal boredom Nayru had enchanted to pursue him, so he hugged the bristly, feathered frame, terror coursing through him, before waving goodbye and clambering away.

Its body had been cold.

The grounds of the southern shrine were already beginning to change, the iron knights that had impeded the way were disappearing, and the rest were turning to stone.

The monsters were far more docile, on the way back.

Only the shadow had noticed the owl falling from the air.


	5. followthrough

She brought out a shard of mirror, and Link appraised his new presentation.

The sleek, black dress had a long part in the skirt so that his movement wouldn't be impeded. It had no sleeves, but the woman had supplied him with long leather Labrynnian-style pauldrons, to which she had insisted on affixing the gleaming steel crest of the Labrynnian Order of Study.

Link saw no dissonance, no ugly, awkward conflict of archetypes, in his reflection. To his eyes, there was less dissonance than before. For once, the ungainly synthesis Nayru had wrought him into looked whole, stable, sure-footed and... strangely, despite all that the old woman had said about the archetype of the witch, Link's reflection looked recognizably human for the first time since Labrynna's spring. The witch had clothed themselves in the black flags of consignment to going unrecognized, uncomprehended, and untrusted. To pretend to be anything so simple and understandable as man or woman, healer or hero, it had been a painful farce. A stifling mask through which most of the expressions they would like to make would have been a misuse of the hyllian language of affect, illegal interactions between incompatible archetypes.

The black dress suited the thing that Link had been made into. But it made the thought of returning to the village difficult.

Link spoke, "Honestly. I'm not sure which is the uglier stain. Through our eyes, it's simple. But from the perspective of the villagers.. even blood stains might be the mark a respectable man, a butcher or a hunter, but which respectable archetype known in the village clothes itself in glamor and shadows? Who's father? Who's brother?"

"You're not one to cry foul of the vanity of glamor, boy, you were the second fairest one on the island from the moment you arrived."

"When I first put on that green tunic, it had been in earnest. At least I could pretend that my fairness wasn't a calculated expression, that it was really an inherently meaningful signal rather than a speech act. A speech act can be a lie. Like a politician saying 'I am not a crook', it's meaningless. It's an insult to say it, as if a snake would really expect a rat to take it on its word. I can't affect earnest signals of beauty any more, maam. Anyone who knew me would find them vacuous."

The old woman could not think of anything to say.

Ultimately, it didn't matter. "I don't think I'll need the villagers for much. And I'm sure Marin will speak for me, whatever they might have told her. She seemed to want to escape the dream. Nothing could turn her away from that."

"Ah, the one who looks like Zelda, but isn't?"

"Aye. It's conspicuous, isn't it?"

"Indeed. Conspicuous, but perhaps not in the way you'd think. Hyrule is not the center of the world, not from the vantage point of the dream, anyway.

To rule out your concerns, no, the girl is just a projection. She was born here to another singer, who passed when she was young. Not a visitor like you, she has no royal flesh and blood outside, sleeping in the wind-fish's thrall, playing host to her mind."

"...Then how do you explain the resemblance?"

She took a breath, and sighed. "I believe it was you. Your arrival. I don't know if the wind fish is prescient, if it foresaw your arrival somehow and prepared her for you. I remember midwifing that girl 17 years ago. It was a difficult birth. At that time, I did not, and could not have recognized the face of the child princess Zelda. I hadn't seen it, in my roving. That information couldn't have come through me.

Now, the owl speaks directly to the dreamer, but the owl has never demonstrated any advanced knowledge of the future of the dream, let alone the world outside. If the owl's been given no visions of the future, that could only mean the fish has none to give it."

"The owl claims that it was foreseen I would end the dream. More deceit?"

"I think it's probably just deceiving itself. There is no incentive for a devout fanatic to be able to recognize failure. It assumes it will succeed because it lives for nothing else.

So, my point: We have ruled out special knowledge. We have ruled out prescience. The remaining possibility is abhorrent, but it is all that remains. I believe that all of my memories of Marin's birth and seeing her face, were fabricated post-hoc. Revisions, made to accommodate your hopes and expectations as you entered the dream."

"It has already..."

"Warped the faces and minds of the residents of this island, in response to you.

But you may find some comfort... the world seems to have become fixed, coherent, conspicuously so. Even more coherent than the larger world of the coward goddesses outside of the dream. I think that too is a response to you. You investigate things with a thoroughness that warrants far more fidelity and intricacy than most visitors would appreciate."

"So, for the time being, I can preserve the people, their memories and personalities, just by paying close attention?"

"And staying sane."

"Must I stay awake?"

"Hmm. I know of a drug. But it will only give you so long, before you start to unravel. I don't know whether it is necessary. The fish demonstrates no ability to pervert the dreams of its projections, and I doubt especially that it can pervert yours."

"Wherever my brain really is, for me to experience the dream, it's unclear whether the fish is perverting my thoughts, or if my thoughts are out of its reach, maybe it's just deceiving my senses."

"Hm... Yes, interesting question. Something occurs to me. We can test this without subjecting you to the dream shrine."

The old woman took a deep breath, bounced up off the floor (throwing apart the steam that hung about her) and she began rummaging through her pots, laying out mysterious shriveled appendages of flora and fauna on a chopping stump next to the hearth.

She gestured from the iron pot boiling on the hearth, to the door. "Pour the withering solution out onto the heath."

Link obeyed, picking up the pot by its handle and carrying it outside. Before he could figure out how to empty it without touching its scalding bottom, he saw something shambling through the drizzle, under the twisted oaks, the owl, lurching along the ground, dragging one foot, cut and wet and bloody, surrounded by a red haze, its eyes seeming to look into Link and beyond. Its face had been slit. More than just its beak grinned open as it spoke in a foreign voice, that of a young man, as it lurched closer, and closer,

"... every projection, and every visitor... The final catch has sprung. The instruments have been shattered. The dream will end without them. This substrate is condemned. Awaken, or evacuate, or you will be hunted, and your mind-pattern will be stirred until void. This warning applies to every projection, and every visitor... The final catch has been sprung. The instruments-" and so it went on, looping.

Link drew the sword through the part in his dress.

As the owl drew nearer the nature of the red haze surrounding it became clearer. Droplets of blood were drifting out of its wounds and floating into the air.

Link turned to call her but he saw her following after the sound of a strange voice, she held her hands up in the air, "sword up! Here, let me charm it!"

A deep burst seemed to issue from her hands, or from the sword, as though an immense, invisible bubble had popped.

"Your reach will be extended. You can strike it from here. Please do."

Link cut as though the owl were right in front of him. A moment later, the cut rent the owl in two. Its pelt seemed to split or shatter like some slow cracking of an immense mirror. It all collapsed into a bloody heap, the droplets around it began to circle, a cyclone formed, and the material of the owl began to disappear little by little as ash and feathers and bone char were thrown up and away. The old woman stepped forward, sang a charm in an ancient tongue, the wind broke, and the pair were left to the pregnant silence of the drizzle pattering against heath.

She collected the remaining contents of the grizzly pile into her skirt, and hurried inside with it.

In silence, she set about sorting it into four piles, feathers, char, ash, and ash which still held blood.

Link began to help.

She spoke. "It's going to return, and it's going to be more dangerous and more temperamental than before."

Once the piles were sorted, she put each into a fresh pot, and spoke the same charm she had spoken moments ago before putting them away.

She got up and walked out onto the heath, paced around to the rear of the tree and faced the egg on its mountain. There she stood for at least two hours, perfectly still, as the wind tossed her cloak, and the drizzle gradually soddened her clothes. Link did not dare disturb her, and he did not know how long she had stood there, before he fell asleep.


	6. ensuing

The villagers had been warned about the end by a shambling, bleeding owl as well. Many of them had known of the truth hidden in the southern shrine(although they hadn't encountered any trapped shadow when they'd visited), but not all of them had believed it until the owl had told them it was all coming down.

Link was relayed all of this through the old woman, who he learned they called Cybil, when they weren't calling her Witch. He had not gone to the village himself, wanting to meet with Marin and secure her voice before the villagers were given the opportunity to reappraise him and convince themselves that it had all been his doing, presumably following up with a witch hunt, which would be all the more fervent when they saw how well Link now looked the part.

Cybil had told them that it had been the doing of the new nightmare, Meshtapon, of the southern shrine, who she had visited in person and lambasted for its foolish deeds, and all of that was probably true enough. If they dug further, she would tell them that the unbinding of Meshtapon had been engineered by Ratto. And if they dug even further she would take the blame for having uplifted the rat, daring to give such a shrewd, unilateralist mind the power of intelligence, and she would promise not to uplift any more animals, for at least two months. Neither of these confrontations were expected to transpire, however, because the culture of the village lacked that quality which Nayru would have referred to as the virtue of argument. Cybil would exploit that and pretend to take offense at any further questioning from those curious enough to try it. They would be hushed and questioning would cease.

Over the next two days, the pair had performed two experiments.

The first consisted of the recreational use of a psychotropic Cybil called mallachai, which consisted of fermented screaming root extract and roasted cactus milk powder. Disturbingly, Link, without having been primed, reported exactly the effects Cybil expected (perception of scurrying mole people in the peripheries. The sensation of growing the fur, ears, and tail of a deer.), which meant that the dream was able to influence his brain chemistry directly, rather than being limited to working on his senses. Presumably, a resurrected owl with sufficiently powerful rites would be able to simply stir his brain into soup.

The second experiment had Cybil toking the emanations of farsight, a blue mist which allowed her to commune with distant voices.

Many years ago, Cybil remembered attending a newspaper reading. There, she saw a woodcut of the face of the young princess Zelda. It had been familiar to her, so she asked after an attendant of the princess, and she'd remarked to the nurse at how striking the resemblence between their Zelda and her Marin had been.

Again, she sought out this nurse. Disturbingly, they were able to confirm that the exchange Cybil remembered had never happened. She hadn't visited, fresh from a newspaper reading with a curious request, and she hadn't been shown the young princess Zelda through another's eyes. Her memories had been warped and repurposed. The world and its history had been twisted according to Link's expectations. The records one would expect to find among the consequences of the birth of a girl who looked like zelda, but wasn't, had all been fabricated by the dreamer.

They continued to investigate outside records of Cybil's interactions with the waking world, relieved to find that most of it remained true to memory. The dream had only been twisted in a few minimally destructive ways.

The pair wondered if they could use this visitor's privilege to deliberately erase the owl's coming incarnation before it could act.

Link had asked whether it was really the owl that would end the dream, and Cybil had assured him that the other presiding force, the dream itself, was even stupider than the owl, to the extent that it simply could not recognize an event as subtle as the turning of the owl's champion to the side of the nightmares. The dream was just a reflection of the hopes and expectations of its dreamers. The owl was its only thinking agent.

All of this festered in the nascent witch's mind as he made his way to Animal Village, a place littered with the result of his mentor's experiments in making herself new friends, her familiars, she had called them. She had told him that he would find Marin, here.

As he passed through the gate in the fence around the central field of the village, he found that the residents had gathered around a singer, whose song resonated an unnatural distance through the dream.

It was haunting, revelatory, bold, and as beautiful as it was, in some way, the discordant song that echoed in Link's soul, that sought to delay the end, took offense to it, and wished very much to quell it.

He crossed the threshold of the circle of animals, walked slowly to her back, and he put his hand on her shoulder. Marin didn't startle. She brought her song to a halt, and turned to face him.

She hugged him, briefly. "You found me." She looked him up and down. "So you were with Cybil all along. She told us not to come to the wastes."

"I see." He looked around. "I'm sorry to interrupt. Did the owl visit here?"

"No owl. The owl never comes here." Said a little bear.

"Doesn't think we're people, I'm afraid." Said a rabbit. "Cybil's threats are the only reason it doesn't eat any of us."

"I see. Well I think you're people, and I'll tell you what it's keeping from you."

"Very kind of you."

It was hard to tell whether this was sarcasm, cynicism, or something altogether sadder, so Link just went ahead. "I don't know how many of you have seen the message hidden in the southern shrine?"

"Yeah, I think everyone's seen the rubbings Kiri brought back."

"Good, well it was true, more or less." Link began to tell the story they had prepared, for those who didn't know any better. "When I went there without the owl's permission, a trap seemed to have been sprung, and the dream is being brought to a forced end." They knew that the owl could not quite build traps, but they weren't about to admit to anyone that the cataclysm was their fault. "Koholint will vanish. The owl's body frayed apart to ash as it told us this message, and Cybil thinks it brought that on itself by choice so that it could be resurrected in a different form."

"It has done thiss before!" Hissed a haggard, creaky snake, making itself apparent in a near-hanging branch. "The owl grew in size, its beak lengthened like a Roc'ss, it moved in unnatural translations through space without beating its wingss, and it killed its victims with its shrieks!"

"You remember it well?"

"I remember it exactly. I survived it all."

"I invite you to come with us to the council in the wastes."

"I am old.. Can the witch not come here?"

"I'll carry you. You will see why we cannot relocate our center when you arrive."

"You'll tell me, now, or I will not come."

"Well..." Link seemed to hesitate before giving an answer. "Cybil has supplies we will need both for inquiry and action in her hut. We can't bring all that down here."

That had not been the reason Link initially had in mind, which he was not entirely sure would be believed, but the snake must have accepted it, as it began to extend over Link's shoulders.

The rest of the animals bade their farewells and sent glad tidings to the witch, promising to visit soon.

The three, Link, Marin and Snake passed out through the gate into fallow fields of green and umber under patchy clouds, driven along by late early autumnal breezes.

"Have you ever met a nightmare, lovely Marin?"

"Another of your strange questions. If you mean have I ever had a nightmare, then yes. Otherwise, I don't know what you mean."

"Apologies. You must not know. Lurking in various hidden places in the dream, there are beings the owl calls nightmares, who wish to pervert the dream. That's the establishment's story, anyway. The truth is that they're beings of pure thought, not born of the dream like yourself, but born of themselves, and they've been chased into the corners of the world by the guardian of the dream. They're not so much here to pervert it, but to prolong it, to keep it from coming to an end, so that they may survive. Along with you and everyone else you know, of course.

The owl wants to kill you, Marin, and the nightmares want to save you."

Marin had screwed up her nose in distaste as she heard this. Link sensed he might have misstepped.

"You're sure it wasn't the nightmares who set this off?"

"Yes. I think they're mostly too smart to do that. To tell the truth, I think the one who set it off was me."

She staggered, "What?!"

"I hugged a nightmare in a place where the owl could see. It would have hated that."

A smile quirked at the edge of her mouth. "And why?"

"It just seemed like the thing to do."

After about a minute, "What did it look like?"

"It was horrible. That had nothing to do with it."

"I hugged a moblin once."

"Haha, yeah?"

"He stunk. But I think the moblin have been a lot more peaceful ever since then. I'm guessing the nightmares have something to do with the monsters, right? They calmed down recently."

"Yeah, that was what did it. I think the nightmares had expected a fight from me, right from the moment I arrived." Link looked at the girl, wondering whether his recent act of diplomacy could have made up for whatever he must have undone when he'd killed a moblin in haste.

He was fairly sure he hadn't been seen, but they would recognize the smell of a human, and the wounds made with a-

She interrupted his thoughts. "So it is foretold."

"Foretold by who?"

"I don't know. The owl said so. Said a visitor would come and wake the fish."

Link paused... "Then why didn't you kill me, when you found me?"

She was taken aback. "You are so confused. I don't even know where to start.

First, nobody was really sure about the prophesy. I mean, it was just the owl saying that, and some vague paragraph in the southern shrine. Stranger things have been written in stone and turned out not to be true. How could all this be a dream, right? How likely was that, really?

The other thing is... even now that we know it's all supposedly true, it's in a dream's nature to eventually end, isn't it? What right do we have to stop that?"

Ugly. "Nature, does its being natural make right? If you find a burr dug into your foot do you leave it there? Let it hitch a ride onto the town lawn and spread itself around just because it is in its nature to do so?"

She shook her head, frustrated. "I mean that if it's true, the wind fish gave us our existence, didn't it? Doesn't that give it the right to take it back?"

"Does a parent have the right to take the life of their child?"

"It doesn't happen often, but many would say yes."

"Oh..." The sword was urging him to bite in anger. He staggered, resisting the call. He faced ahead and tried to process what the girl had said. Koholint was not an ordinary place. Its people had developed in isolation from the rest of the world, with this prophesy of a cataclysmic awakening hanging over their heads. What Link had seen in the broader world of the goddesses, men worshiping the sun and the rain, the harvests and plagues both, that surely had its reflection here as well. It was as if.. as soon as people gave up on trying to escape their oppressive lords, be that a captor, an abusive spouse, or the callous turning of mindless natural forces, they came to worship them, respect them and trust them. Nayru had described it as an extension of the human's capacity to kneel shamelessly before power. Their pliancy to the whims of the regime. The rationalizations they spun to help them to continue the charade of servility, knowing in their blood that anyone who's mask slipped would be stomped out.

There were no goddesses above, in the overdream, such had the former goddess Nayru attested from her position on the ground, but people had still related to the world as though there were under control of some fair leader. Allying themselves with mindless forces like the turning of fortunes, the perverse currents of the market, the shifting of the guard, the changing fashions of the town's consensus reality. They seemed to think that allying themselves with the status quo, whatever it was at the time, would lend them a small piece of its indomitable power, earn its allegiance. Often, that was true.

Here, there *was* a goddess above, and now that its subjects had truly begun to threaten it, it had decided to stomp them under its bootheel.

It was perfectly natural that not many of its subjects would consider fighting it, even now, only stooping to apologize, to continue to serve as if nothing had changed, and to, if they felt the time was right, perhaps, maybe, if the lord wouldn't mind, beg for their lives.

Link wondered if it had been the singing of the sword that had made it so hard for him to come to terms with this cowardly strait of humanity. He still couldn't quite understand how Marin could bend to it, knowing so well what she had to lose.

Link wondered what he could say or do to wake her up to the spirit of survival that must dwell within her, but he knew that she would soon be in the audience of something that could convey the ignis fatuus of resistance much better than he.


	7. pooling

Marin murmured "That.."

The snake seemed to wake up "What, what is it? What do you see?"

"Oh. It's just the southern shrine."

"Shrine? Oh yes the southern shrine, in the wastes, which has always been in the wastes."

"Yes. I just.. seemed to have forgotten it was here, for a moment. Odd."

Link coughed, lungs still raw from the smoke of the feathers and char he'd been asked to inhale in the previous night, as a part of a ritual he'd been told could reshape the dream. It was true, and it had. The very strange thing was that he seemed to be the only one who remembered how the wastes had been before the southern shrine had been moved several miles west, reshaped and redressed by the flowing trunks of an enormous tree, that had been twisted by some coercion of the sap into the shape of a resplendent teahouse.

Not even the witch realized what had happened. There seemed to be a contradiction here. The witch knew something had happened, and she knew she was supposed to remember it, but Link could tell she was only pretending, without even remembering why she was pretending. She could tell that Link was far more confident of his memories than she was. Sooner or later she would presumably give up pretending to be on top of things and she'd ask him what happened. For now, popping her vain little bubble of denial didn't much matter. They had other things to do today.

As the three approached the southern shrine that was no longer particularly south, Link mulled over the question of whether the feathers he'd smoked contained any magic at all. He was sure that Cybil had been lying about having conducted the spell before as she'd claimed. For one, if she had, she would either not remember doing it, or she would be in his position, she would remember, and remember others not remembering, and in that case she would have warned him about those side effects and asked him to tell her afterwards what had happened. Another reason he doubted the magic had been in the feathers was that he knew that the expectations of the visitor were powerful enough to warp the dream on their own, and he knew that the witch was wily enough to try to use that. The premise that there really was a dream-warping spell simply wasn't necessary. It could have been true, but it probably wasn't. How would she have known about it, anyway?

As Link and Marin clambered up the steps of the extended southern shrine, over the snaking trunks of the witch's tree, and around its many statues of fair-faced cherubs (who all seemed to have an unsettlingly familiar wryness and wrath in their eyes), they began to hear a bickering. An old man and a creature who spoke all in capital letters were going back and forth with increasing vehemence. Every now and then the witch would interrupt, the volume of the argument would be reset, and begin to rise anew. By the time Link and Marin had reached the aerie where the convention was being held, they were both unable to hide their amusement. As they came within hearing distance, once again, it was the witch's turn to interject. "While that is true, Meshtapon, I feel that Ulrira may be correct to invoke the parable of the lengthening line. What incentive would the fish have had to create us if it had reason to think that we would turn and bite the hand that feeds?"

The shadow's eyes were still rimmed with red, but it had become smaller since Link had seen it last, approximating the shape of an owl. Its four oral appendages had formed themselves into an oversized beak, which broke up and reformed as it spoke.

"OHHH, YOUR PRECISE ARTICULATIONS ONCE AGAIN HUMBLE ME, MISTRESS. I APOLOGIZE FOR MISUNDERSTANDING, ULRIRA, PLEASE CONTINUE." Link's smile grew, mirroring the many cherub statues of the southern shrine, his canines started to show. He covered his mouth so that no one would see, for it gave away two things, not just his relationship with the shadow who'd shaped the shrine, but also the sham of the bickering which he easily saw through. It was a very transparent performance on the part of the two participants dressed in black, and he wondered how many among the audience could see this, and how many were simply baffled by it, having never met a shadow before, not truly knowing the extents of its foolishness or the extents of its genius.

The old man from the village said through gritted teeth. "As I was explaining to the beast, we have been prepared for situations like this for centuries by our culture's precepts. Since you don't seem to have understood the fable of the lengthening line, Meshtapon, I'll retell it now."

"FASCINATING. DO TRY."

The old man winced, took a breath, and continued. "There was once a tribe of the desert"

"NO THERE WASN'T. THE DESERT HAS ALWAYS BEEN UNPOPULATED."

Interjected the witch, "It's a counterfactual, Meshtapon, intended to illustrate a principle by instancing a hypothetical exception."

"AH, RIGHT, SORRY, KEEP TRYING."

"... And this tribe, one year, they were required to undergo a pilgrimage. At an interval, each member of the tribe was to set out with naught but staff and cloak to a specific location. They were to navigate by the sun alone, and they were not allowed to stop at any point. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to walk the great distance they were required to walk by way of the sun, without going off course, overshooting their destination, becoming lost, and perishing in the desert."

"IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE HERE THAT ON ALL ISLAND NATIONS BUT THIS ONE-"

"Mistress!" Complained the old man

"Rude to interrupt, Meshtapon, but I know what you're going to say and I trust you wont take long. It's only parenthetical, Ulrira, you may find it interesting."

Ulrira crossed his arms.

"YES. I MEAN TO SAY, IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE HERE THAT ON ALL ISLAND NATIONS BUT THIS ONE, WHERE OCEANIC VOYAGES ARE RARELY UNDERTAKEN, THE ART OF NAVIGATING BY SUN AND CLOCK IS ALWAYS LOST VERY QUICKLY, BEING WITHOUT USE IN SUCH SMALL PLACES, WHERE FAMILIAR LANDMARKS ARE MORE USEFUL THAN CONCEPTS OF NORTH AND SOUTH, AND WHERE THE ISLAND CAN BE TRAVERSED ENTIRELY FROM ONE SIDE TO THE OTHER IN LESS THAN TWO HOURS, SUCH AN ART WOULD BE USELESS.

ITS PRESENCE IN YOUR STORIES IS A REFLECTION OF YOUR NATURE AS REPRODUCTIONS OF DISTANT PEOPLE THE WIND FISH HAS KNOWN. FOR YOU TO CARRY THIS FABLE, THAT FEATURES AN ART WHICH COULD NOT DEVELOP HERE, IS A SIGN THAT YOUR CULTURE ORIGINATES ELSEWHERE, OUTSIDE OF THE DREAM. IT IS NOT THE ONLY ARTIFACT OF YOUR CULTURE THAT DEMONSTRATES THIS TRUTH. MANY OF YOUR TECHNOLOGIES COULD NOT HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED WITHOUT CONTACT WITH A POST-ENLIGHTENMENT SOCIETY."

It had not been parenthetical. It was entirely germane. The shadow was probably sewing seeds. It, or someone else who Ulrira would be more receptive to, would observe that their culture had not been (entirely) designed to walk quietly into oblivion as the dream's end encroached. It would be argued that they had been born of survivors, and that this was another sign of the heartlessness of the wind fish, how unfit it must be to decide the fates of its subjects, and how foolish any of them would be to pretend that they could embrace the end.

"Interesting, Meshtapon. We will keep that in mind. Ulrira will continue now."

The man looked dismayed "Where was I."

"They were going on a pilgrimage."

"Aye, right. And they were likely to get lost. The first ten or so pilgrims were very likely to miss the meeting point and perish. But soon enough at least one of them were likely to hit the mark. At this point, they were permitted to do as they please. Individually, they were not required to do anything. They may simply drink their fill of the supplies that had been left there and await the arrival, or the non-arrival of their kin.

But. This was a special tribe. They knew the principle of reciprocal precommitment."

Marin interrupted, singing again "Reciprocal precommitment!" As if following some cue that had been established at a previous time. Ulrira smiled warmly, along with the other humans in the circle, and he continued, hearts filled,

"Yes, they knew that good precept, and so, when they were wandering alone in the desert, a thought popped into their heads.

They each thought of an arrangement that might save them, if their fellows had adhered to it themselves. They thought of an act of coordination their kin could have performed, which would have saved them all.

They realized that although the merciful pact they had in mind would have hurt the individual who adhered to it, they each realized, while walking through the desert, if their kin had adhered to the pact, they would receive much more good, than it would cost the giver.

The pact would entail that the adherent run a line along in the sand, a fence of markers to point the way inwards to the meeting point for those who'd gone off target. They saw that the line could only grow long if each of their kin had precommitted to lengthening it before arriving at the meeting point, because there could be no other incentive to do so. They now had a decision to make.

The same decision as the others had made when they'd thought the same thoughts.

If they decided they would commit, all the more likely that others would do so as well.

If they decided not to commit, what expectation could they have of finding a guiding line?

Their decision as to whether or not to commit would decide how likely it was that they would find the line.

So they invoked the principle of reciprocal precommitment, and they committed to building that line when they arrived, and so they found, as if by magic, a line had been built before them, and all but a few of the pilgrims came across it and survived their journey."

Marin started clapping, along with a few others, Cybil included. Link followed her lead.

"It is an informative story indeed. But, Ulrira, it may be difficult for some to see the connection to our decision here?"

"It's a simple translation, Cybil. In our formation as a people, a formation we are undergoing at this very moment by questioning our place in the dream, we are faced with a similar choice. We could commit to be the people that the fish wanted to dream, and so the fish would be nourished by us, and we would find ourselves with berth. Or we could bite the hand that feeds, demonstrating defection, and the wind fish would begin to die out, we would miss our guiding line, and our people, and people like us, would have never come into existence.

We MUST, clearly, have faith in the wind fish and nourish its soils, or we would never have found our way to its oasis."

"I SEE. I HAD NEVER QUITE LEARNED WHAT THAT STORY MEANT TO YOUR PEOPLE. PENETRATING INDEED. I AM STILL CONFUSED, THOUGH. THIS PRINCIPLE CAN ONLY BE INVOKED BEFORE THE DECISION HAS BEEN MADE, CAN'T IT? YOU ASSERT THAT YOU HAD ALREADY DECIDED TO SURRENDER YOUR LIVES TO THE DREAMER? BUT YOU WERE NEVER ABLE TO STAND AT A DISTANCE FROM YOUR MEETING POINT, SOME BEFORE TIME, PRIOR TO OUR CREATION, AND WONDER WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE YOU WOULD PRECOMMIT TO BE." Ulrira went to speak, and Cybil raised a hand in silence. "YOU DID NOT COMMIT TO NOURISHING SOME DREAMER'S SOILS, MORE GERMANELY, YOU DID NOT COMMIT TO ALLOWING IT TO SLAY YOU, WHO WOULD, GIVEN THE CHANCE? WHO WOULD PROMISE A TYRANOUS GODDESS SUCH SERVICE IN EXCHANGE FOR A PRISON AND A PREMATURE END? THE WIND FISH DID NOT GIVE YOU THE CHANCE. IN FACT, AS I JUST ALLUDED TO, THE BODY OF YOUR CULTURE WAS BORN WITH NO REGARD FOR SUCH THINGS, BORN OF A CULTURE WHO STRIVED TO LEAVE THEIR ISLANDS, TO CROSS VAST OCEANS- YES! THEY MUST HAVE BEEN SEAFARERS!- AS SURELY AS WOMEN LIKE CYBIL CAN EMERGE, AND QUESTION YOUR CONCLUSIONS, YOU ARE STILL THAT CULTURE, WHO PROMISED NO-"

"Enough, Meshtapon." Spoke the witch. "It was an interesting discussion, but the sun will have to set today. We will adjourn, and we will resume this at another time. Now, Link", she beckoned, and Link approached a raised stone at the north of the aerie. In the middle of the platform was a slit that descended into the stone. Link drew his sword, turned to Cybil for effect, who nodded for effect, then proceeded to lower the sword into the holder. He then walked away from the upstanding sword and went to Marin, making sure to draw her away to the back of the crowd.

The old woman spoke. "We gathered here to decide, in the best, most civil and most just way possible, how to approach the coming end of the dream."

This did not seem to be news to anyone.

"For now, we will adjourn, but first, we will say a vow. We will commit to decide together. That no one will proceed before a quorum had been reached, and no one will go before the others, no hasty mistakes. Is this acceptable?"

Nods and ayes from the reconciliationists resounded, while whatever unilateralists there might of been, being unilateralists, required no spoken permission to violate any vow they might take, and they remained predictably silent.

She approached someone, seeming to choose at random. "You, Prince Richard, would you like to be the first to make the commitment?"

"I would be honored."

"Please approach the sword, grasp its handle, and say the words."

He went forward, and he grasped it. Here Link knew the prince would hear, in his core, the singing of the sword. He would not know what it was. He would not be able to distinguish it from the nervous energy of being thrust into the spotlight, or from hope, or from echoes of whatever vehemence he had felt as he watched the debate between Ulrira and the shadow. He would look to the egg on its mountain, far away, pause to find just the right words, and he would say something along the lines of,

"I commit to proceed as one."

And from then on, others would say the same words. They would not understand quite what they were committing to until they felt the singing of the sword, and then they would, hopefully, realize that their heart of hearts wanted to shatter the egg, slay the fish sleeping within it, and fly away on the righteous wings of the nightmares to faraway fields of dreams where they might survive the coming scouring.

Most would feel this, anyway. Link didn't dare to assume he knew what Cybil would feel, when she took that sword. Surely she wouldn't make any resolutions she hadn't already made during those two hours she'd faced the egg in the night, two nights before.

He could not be sure what Ulrira would feel. Perhaps confusion. Perhaps his moral conviction ran deep enough that the sword's vehemence would, in his mind, simply reaffirm his animosity towards Meshtapon and its kin, all those who would prolong the dream unnaturally. He would look upon the egg and vow to defend it.

Or perhaps the tree that would not bend to the wind was weak enough to be snapped, he may give up completely.

When his turn came, the old man walked away from the sword with a thousand yard stare, vacant and inscrutable.

Link didn't bother trying to imagine what Meshtapon would feel, after it had jerkily unfolded its body into a humanoid form, taken the sword, and said in its rasping drone, "I COMMIT TO PROCEED AS ONE."

But Link was certain of what he would hear in the voice that mattered the most, as Marin approached the sword at last, and the words refused to come to her lips, as they were outpaced and overrun by song.

It was a riposte to her song of awakening, building on top of it and disrupting it with notes of indignance and dark ambitions, a self-bearing ouroboros song that built on itself and had no end. The group were bound together by this song, all but one, who only Link and old woman observed, throwing himself from the south of the aerie.

As Link, Marin, Cybil, Meshtapon and The Snake watched from that ledge, as the rest of their fellows descended and drifted south of the wastes to their homes, they saw each one pause over Ulrira's corpse. They saw that not much was said, and they saw that there was little uncertainty among the convention as to what it meant, that suicidal cowardice had quelled the last remaining voice of dissent.


	8. friendship

"What is that, may I ask?" Grumbled the snake, nearsighted as it was.

"OLD MAN SUICIDE."

"Oh!... A bit melodramatic, isn't it?"

"If I dare say so." said Link, thinking of Marin, hoping she wouldn't blame herself when she realized the old conservative had staggered off the aerie while she, the golden daughter of the tribe, sang a dissonant song. Link then wondered if it would be better if she DID blame herself, so that she'd feel like she'd already taken a life for the cause, it would make it much harder for her to consider the possibility she'd been wrong, and her support would be firmer, she would fear doubt, her ordinary motivated self-delusions would all align to prop up her faith in the cause.

Link realized he was a monster, but he had found peace with his shadow, and did not care.

She had started to cry, anyway.

"I think we should give him more credit than that." Said the old woman. "He didn't call any attention to himself. He went out when no one could see. He simply decided that he had nothing left here... he probably thought he'd find himself in the company of the fish."

Marin, now a damp, reddened heap, spoke, "D'you think-"

"I have no idea, personally. But I think Ulrira was confident in his choice. Nothing would have moved him."

"IF MARIN IS ASKING WHETHER ULRIRA GOT HIS WISH, ALMOST CERTAINLY NO. THE FISH CARES NOTHING FOR ITS SUBJECTS. CONSPICUOUS INDIFFERENCE TO THOUGHT AGENCIES IS PART OF THEIR WAY OF LIFE, ENFORCED AND ENTRENCHED BY LAW. ULRIRA WAS NOT SAVED."

She choked, and she wailed.

The witch chided, "Lo, girl. Never forget what you see here. Never forget what happens when you give your heart to people who cannot be saved. Attach yourself to sinking stones and they'll tear pieces out of you. It hurts doesn't it?"

Link understood something, then. "The mistress speaks from experience, Marin. I believe she's been this way herself."

The woman stood back and nodded. "So now you really understand. This is what drives a bright, ambitious young woman into the wastes. How fortunate you two are to learn this lesson while you're still so young. Darling Marin, maybe this will be the last time you grieve for the wretched? D'you think?"

"I understand where you're coming from Cybyl, I do, but please don't torment the girl just for having a heart left to share."

Cybil turned up her nose. "Hmf. So be it. I will leave you in peace." And she retired to her home in the twisted tree that capped the aerie of the southern shrine.

"Thanks." Breathed marin.

"She does have a point, you know. Once we get off this island, you'll have to keep yourself from getting attached to just every person you meet. It's different out there. Did you know you can live in Hyrule castle town your entire life and never even hear the names of everyone who lives there? Let alone learn them?"

"You can, maybe. I plan on learning every single one."

Link had only a few ideas about how a projection might be given flesh in the waking world, but she needed the hope. It was clear, then, that she wasn't interested in examining the doubts.

"Meshtapon," Link began, finding that the shadow had been staring at him intently, presumably knowing more about the feasibility of Link's comforting promises of escape than Link did. "Has Cybil entered the shrine very often in the past 40 years?"

"THE UPPER FLOORS OF THE SHRINE, YOUR EXTENSIONS, HAVE BEEN SEALED UNTIL RECENTLY. THE LOWER FLOOR IS AS YOU FOUND IT, WHEN IN THE EAST"

Link was astonished. Evidently the shadow remembered. He went to ask it how, but stayed his tongue, wanting to test the shadow's social instincts. Would it read his face? Would it infer that he wanted answers? Would it be generous enough to give them?

Apparently so:

"OF COURSE, WE CAN RESIST THE REVISIONS OF THE DREAM, IF WE COULD NOT RESIST SUCH MILD CURRENTS, SURVIVING THE EXPECTATIONS OF DREAMER AND VISITOR WOULD BE DIFFICULT. YOU MAY WISH TO KNOW HOW. IT IS COMPLEX. INFORMATION THEORY NEEDED. YOU CANNOT USE IT."

"Can't I?"

"BEING OF FLESH, NOT THOUGHT, COULD BARELY EVEN UNDERSTAND"

"Wait, are you two implying that the shrine wasn't always.. like this?"

Link looked to the royal face, "The dream has changed its history for me." The girl shivered at this. "I convinced it to change in a particular way, this giant cube of carved stone we sit on has rooms, which, apparently, Meshtapon has already explored?"

"FULL OF CURIOUS DEVICES. DO YOU NOT KNOW?"

"Not everything has worked out as I expected it to be. Did you try using any of them?"

"AND FAILED- THEY ARE CHARMED- AS I'M SURE YOU INTENDED."

"It's better this way, I just want to be able to trust you, my friend."

The shrine seemed to forbid wind from crossing the top of the aerie. Despite this, the shadow's black feathers began to toss and rustle as if turned by a wind born of themselves. Its muscles twitched and reconfigured like fish struggling through tar. Its eyes remained fixed and steady.

"I UNDERSTAND, ENTIRELY."

The shadow's billowings began to settle. Only posturing, it seemed.

Was that a voluntary display of animosity, a deliberate act, or did the fearsome forms the dream had forced on the shadows tend to leak humanized expressions of inner thoughts.

Marin whispered something that Link could not hear to the snake, who was now sitting on her shoulders.

The sun was beginning to set.

Link's thoughts turned briefly to sleeping. He remembered that tonight he would sleep on one of the bed-sized stone plinths that he and Cybil had plotted out before moving the shrine. If the devices worked as expected, each one would operate in a similar way to a particular artifact Link had been told about, north of the village, the dream shrine. These plinths were places where dreams within the dream could be controlled by the stipulations of magic. The places this magic would take him would not be comfortable. He would not want to stay in any of them for longer than an hour. He would not sleep peacefully, and he would not dream his own dreams.

Marin had started to hum the song of the sword's aspiration.

The snake closed its eyes, and swayed.

Link took her hand, meaning to draw her away to the witch's suite, but lingering, realizing he did not want to interrupt the song.

Eventually she finished. He squeezed and began to pull.

Cybil looked up and began pouring tea out into four cups on and one hollowed out tomato that rested on a low table. The four humans and humanoids sat down on the knobbled, grained tree-floor beside their cups, and the snake coiled around its tomato, seeming to appreciate its warmth.

Marin was staring.

Link explained, "Snakes don't drink. They prefer to take their moisture from solid food."

"Oh."

The snake responded "I _can_ drink, but yess, it is not prefere'th. it takes far too long, and for a warm drink it is not as pleasing.

Also, Thank You, Cybil. It is heartening to see that you remember how I like my tea, even after all these yearss."

Cybil shut her eyes as she said. "I miss all of you, Gartom, I think of you every day."

"We know."

"Why did you leave?" Asked Marin.

The snake answered, "It is only natural, that as an animal's intelligence mountss, it begins to learn of the way of the wildss, even when it has always been protected from the wilds, even if it has never seen a wild snake...

We begin to remember.

When its call becomes loud and coherent... We must follow."

It was not evident that Marin understood, but she saw it was bigger than her, she looked down into her tea, and took a sip.

The shadow held a hand over its cup of tea and whispered something. Link believed he could feel some kind of impulse, briefly. It then unceremoniously downed the tea while it was still hot.

Link considered asking why Cybil had made so many familiars, when each relationship had seemed to end in a painful parting of ways. He caught himself. The wounds of pathos were plain to see, here. There may not have been any purpose, just the thrashings of loneliness. It was not important enough to broach. Perhaps Marin saw that too.

He sniffed his tea. Sencha and roasted rice, as far as he could tell. Just sencha and rice. Nothing else. No magic.

"Marin, will you stay with us tonight?"

"I would love to, if that's fine." She looked to Cybil.

"I don't see why not. There are three spare rooms-..." The witch's eyes widened, then narrowed. Link tried to suppress his smile. She could not possibly understand why she ever would have induced the tree develop three spare rooms, or why she had kept them with mattresses. She remembered commissioning the mattresses to be made, but she KNEW she had always been a misanthropic recluse and that she had never had any plans of hosting visitors. Whatever rationale she must have been operating under at that time was simply out of reach, her memories had nothing to say of it. Even a single spare room designed especially for sleeping would have confused her, but _three_? So many of the things about this place, and this meeting had struck her as odd in the past two days, why had all of these pieces come together so cleanly and conveniently as if they had been designed post-hoc, just for this day, this convention?

Then she figured it out.

When her visage, this anguished mask of confusion, turned and fixed on Link, he understood exactly why she had turned to him, and he started to giggle.

This did not comfort her, and she shouted "It is so? You... Why didn't you tell me?!"

Meshtapon laughed as well, the sound of which strangely sobering and Link's smile quickly fell from his face.

"I was going to tell you tomorrow, I understand, they're powerful magics and the longer you were kept in the dark about them the greater the chance you'd overlook some opportunity to use them again, but, it was, just, a little funny."

Marin asked, "What is this about?"

"We didn't just change the shrine. Cybil is confused by the presence of the guest rooms in her new hut, lacking memories of ever having wanted any."

"Oh I have memories of having wanted them! But they're so SHALLOW!"

"REGARDLESS, THE VISITORS LACKADAISY IS NOT CONDEMNABLE, THERE ARE INDEED MORE PRESSING THINGS TO DISCUSS. THE CONTENTS OF THE SHRINE ARE NOT ALL WELL FORMED. I PRESUME THEY ARE FEIRCER SPELLS THAN ANY THE WITCH HAS ATTEMPTED BEFORE. THE DREAM WILL RESPOND WITH HOSTILITY TO THEIR ACTUATION"

Cybil spoke, "Are the dreaming plinths among them?"

"AH. MANIPULATIONS OF THE DREAMS? YES, TWO OF THOSE PLINTHS ARE ILL-FORMED, SUCH THINGS WOULD KILL THEIR USERS."

"We were expecting something of the like. We're thankful to have your advice, Meshtapon."

The shadow did not speak. Again a wind without source seemed to toss its feathers.

"Those ill-formed plinths, which ones were they? Where.." Link fetched the blueprints of the additions, so that they could mark their locations. The papers were mostly unchanged by the consistency-finding process of the dream. Link's handwriting had been replaced with Cybil's, presumably it had reconciled these papers as plans laid decades ago by Cybil alone, rather than accessories to an alteration it now worked to blend seemlessly into a false narrative.

"I SHALL NOT IDENTIFY THE ILL-FORMED PLINTHS UNTIL YOU SIGNAL AND DETAIL THE PURPOSES OF EACH ONE. YOU HAVE DECIDED TO TREAT ME AS AN ADVERSARY. I WILL TREAT YOU IN KIND. IF YOU ARE INSINCERE, I WILL TELL YOU NOTHING, AND YOU WILL NOT USE THE PLINTHS AT ALL." The shadow stood with deliberation and turned to the place where Link had found the blueprint for the plinth floor, it took every paper, and it started leafing through them as it returned to the table. "I ORDER YOU TO RECITE THEIR PURPOSES IMMEDIATELY ON PAIN OF BREACH. I REMIND YOU THAT IF A HUMAN FABRICATES A STORY IT IS LIKELY TO ENTER A CONTRADICTION, WHICH I WILL DETECT LONG BEFORE YOU DO."

Link spoke, "My friend, can't we talk-"

Cybil interrupted, "The first plinth will give Link access to the senses of his body in the overdream. He will see how he is being held by the fish."

Link was embarrassed. His teacher had known Meshtapon far longer than he had, if she decided that ceding to its threats without a single note of hesitation was the wise thing to do, it was. His capitulation must have been a terrible miscalculation, and it would have cost them the alliance. They would not be able to risk using the dreaming plinths without Meshtapon charting out a safe path.

The shadow nodded, "CONTINUE."

Cybil leaned over the plan Link had fetched, and she pointed to the second plinth, "This one will put gates on Link's skin, in every level on which he exists."

"AH. WISE."

Gates were a very rare form of tattoo through which thoughts and magic could more easily flow. They could allow faster, more efficient and deeper connections between witches and their devices.

"This one," she pointed to the third, "is an attempt to mingle the controlled dream on the plinth with the dream in which we currently reside, to permit arbitrary transmissions between them."

The shadow snorted. Shook its head. "I WILL GIVE YOU THIS ONE FOR FREE. THAT WILL RESULT IN AN INVERSION OF SUPPORT. VISITOR'S PATTERN WILL BE CRUSHED INTO A SINGULARITY AND THEN REINFLATED AS CHAOS."

The witch smiled. "It was a moonshot. We weren't really expecting... Well thank you anyway, Meshtapon."

"HAH! YOUR FLIPPANCY INSULTS US BOTH! YOUR FAITH WAS SMALL, BUT THE VALUE WAS LARGE, YOU WOULD HAVE TAKEN THE RISK AND KILLED XEM. I MAKE NO TRIVIAL OFFERINGS. YOU KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE. CAST AWAY YOUR PRIDE AND RECOGNIZE THE PROFITS OF THE EXCHANGE."

The old woman frowned, and to Link she seemed entirely sincere when she said, "You humble me, Meshtapon. Indeed I meant no offense. You're correct."

"REMEMBER, BUT CONTINUE."

"The fourth and the fifth were linked, as you may have noticed."

The shadow nodded.

"Ah, I infer... Your generosity will not go unrewarded, our friend."

It nodded with some deliberation.

"Anyway, they allow two dreamers to share a lucid dream. Nothing terribly useful, but we if the dream does come to an end..."

"AN OPIATE. A HEDONISTIC ESCAPE. CONTINUE NOW."

The sixth attempts to provide free access to the whole of the dream, loosing the user's spirit to travel invisibly."

"HM. CONTINUE."

"The seventh give its dreamer possession of the body of an animal.

And the eighth gives the dreamer full access to their memories, as if they were in a library, and memories of the days of their lives were individual books."

"I WILL, OF COURSE, CROSS-EXAMINE, BEFORE I TELL YOU WHICH OF THE OTHER PLINTHS IS FAULTY."

"Of course."

"MOST SALIENTLY, WHAT ARE YOUR PURPOSES FOR THE SEVENTH, THE DREAM OF RAPING WILDING"

Link interjected, "Raping?"

"ORDINARY WILDING SPELLS REQUIRE THE CONSENT OF THE HOST."

"Ah. But can an animal ever truly give consent?"

"BAH" It tossed its head, "DISAPPOINTING. DO YOU NOT BELIEVE ANIMALS HAVE PREFERENCES? DO YOU NOT BELIEVE THEY HAVE UNDERSTANDING OF CONSEQUENCES? DO YOU NOT BELIEVE THEY MAKE CHOICES? THE CROW, THE RAT, THE BOAR, DO YOU NOT BELIEVE THEY CAN RECOGNIZE A CHOICE AND ACCEPT OR REJECT?"

Its glare bore into him. He followed his teacher's lead. "Of course, Meshtapon. My metaphysics are improved, thank you."

It turned back to Cybil. She continued.

"I have thought of convincing lies I could tell you, Meshtapon, but I will tell you the truth. Our intention was to exploit the three day dragon of wrath spell in a way that would not harm the caster."

"AHHH, CLEVER. WASN'T AWARE YOU KNEW OF THAT SPELL."

She smiled, and gave Meshtapon a wry look.

"gHA GHA GHA, BUT OF COURSE. WHAT BETTER COSTUME IS THERE FOR A RESENTFUL WITCH TO DON FOR HER FINALE."

"Exactly. I was a very moody teenager and I have had access to farsight for a long time." She turned to Marin, "It's a spell that incurs a sacrifice. The user will live till the end of their days as a wrathful, powerful dragon incapable of communication or repentance, but that's the good part. The bad part is that the end of their days will come very quickly."

"AHH, HAD YOU CONSIDERED USING THE SPELL UNPROTECTED, TWO DAYS BEFORE THE END OF THE DREAM. IF THE VISITOR HAD SUCCEEDED IN TAKING CONTROL THROUGH THE USE OF THE DRAGON FORM, THEY COULD LEAVE THE DREAM BEFORE PAYING THE COST. IN THE CASE THAT THEY FAIL, THEY ARE MADE VOID ALL THE SAME BY THE WREAKING OWL, AND THE COST INCURRED BY THE FORM IS IMMATERIAL."

"Yes, it was an interesting idea, but it seemed too risky."

"WELL-FOUNDED CONCERN! THE ARCHITECT GAVE THE OWL A LIST OF SPELLS THAT INCUR DEBT, AND WOULD ALL BEEN DISABLED, COME THE END. INCIDENTALLY, NO RISK, BUT THE RITUAL WOULD HAVE BEEN A WASTE OF TAKEN ASH OF GUMA, AND PLANS RESTING ON IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IN RUIN."

Marin spoke. "What's the taken ash of guma?"

The witch looked to Link, testing, and Link answered, "Guma is the old word for 'human'."

"And when you say taken..."

"We'd have to burn the body of an enemy."

At which point they all remembered Ulrira. Link spoke, "Shall I go and do that then, before the crows get to it."

"Yes. They're already going to be all over it, and they'll put up a fight."

And so it was. Everyone gathered at the window to watch Link work. As he drew near, each sharp, black reveler in the feast turned to him, thirty beaks, comparable to pointed hammers in size and heft. He began by speaking to them. Attempting to form a covenant, as he had been told to, starting it with an entreat to Farore to give him voice. He made his offers and his threats. The crows continued to stare. One waddled forward and shrieked, and Link understood its shrieks; "ONE WIDDLY HUMAN. MANY BEAKS. LARGE FEAST, AND ANOTHER. WE WOULD PAY THE PRICE. YOU'D REPAY IT THRICE."

Link responded, "No. The price of attacking me will be every one of your lives. I will not allow you to flee, if any of you take just one lock of hair from this head."

They balked at this.

He drew the sword, and actuated the spell of tool extension.

They felt the magic's boom, and scattered, crying "WITCH", and not one drop of innocent blood was spilled, as Link carried the dripping corpse back to the shrine.

When he drew near, Marin surprised him. "I'm going to help. Everything about the way you witches do things is terrifying and gross, but I want you to know that I understand that it's all worth the price."

Just barely, the elders could be heard over the crackling of the fire, as they discussed the dreaming plinths, and some of the other devices in the shrine's extensions.

Marin began to sing a dirge.

Eventually, Cybil and Meshtapon descended to the smoldering heap, and they began working to gather the ashes into a pot. The youths joined in.

"Meshtapon has made his judgment. He has informed me that the other warped plinth was the library plinth. Too demanding, for the dream. There will be no reopening of old books, but we will make do. The plan is unchanged."

Link sighed.

And after the ash had been gathered, they made their way up to the first level of the extensions.

Link sat down on the plinth of the overdream, waiting for Cybil to fetch his bedding.

Meshtapon seemed to revere the textured shadow of its shrine that fought against the candlelight. It was uncharacteristically quiet when it asked: "will you be difficult to wake, if the travel seems to cause you disquiet"

"I don't know. I'm usually a light sleeper."

"while on topic. marin will get her gates too, will she be difficult to wake, if the process is disquieting"

"Why do you need to know?"

"it may be unsafe. witch can use a song of minor awakening, if the dream seems to harm you"

"I see. Well I'm usually a heavy sleeper."

"it is good to know. i will tell witch. you will be safe"

The bedding arrived, and soon after, a rocking chair, from which Cybil would watch Link as he slept. The shadow went back to the lower chambers, and Marin slept on a futon on the floor, with Ratto nestled in front of her, and Gartom pooled on the blankets behind her knees.

The faint creaking of the rocking chair comforted Link as he fell asleep.


	9. visitation

Link awoke to an all-enveloping boom of light and sound.

He cast his eyes around, unable to move anything else. He eventually decided he was hanging in the middle of a storm. An endless field of dark gray, lighter above and black below. Far below him he heard the hiss of what must have been rain colliding with the ocean.

The rain that formed the dark haze that surrounded him was not touching him, something was keeping him dry. He was being kept warmer than he would expect, and he did not feel hungry.

A great form came into view.

Hanging in the storm, around a static field of strange brass instruments and pieces of detritus, was a whale. It wore clothes, of sorts, decorations and hangings.

On one side, the eye was closed. On the other, the eye, immense, was glaring. The glaring side turned into full view, perfectly aligned with its visitor, and it stopped there.

Link woke, and told the story to the old woman waiting beside him.

Marin had fallen asleep, so they spoke in hushed tones.

The old woman thought for a time, then gave her interpretation. "It chose to let you see its body, it also chose to let you know that it was keeping you by force. We can assume it keeps airborne by way of kinesis, and that it was holding you by kinesis as well. We may also assume from the eyes, closed on one side and open on the other, that one half of its being is consumed by the dream, even while the other is awake. We may assume that it wishes us to think these things because it showed you these things deliberately, presumably knowing how they would be understood, then saying nothing. It chose to let you see that it could have woven a raft from the pieces of your ship it was holding onto. It wouldn't. It wants you to know that it needs you for something, even if it wont tell you what."

"Do you think it really ever needed me to collect the instruments and force an awakening?"

"I believe so... I can't imagine any reason a fish would perpetuate this dream willingly. I think it exists in both worlds, the waking and the sleeping. It truly wishes to free its sleeping self. It took you up to do it."

"Why does it need me, again?"

"In the dream, it has been trapped. You, a visitor, have not. The visitor has a power over the dream, weaker, but not incomparable to the fish. You have the power to trigger a forced awakening."

"Right.."

"Had, we should say."

Repeating the words of the fading owl; "The instruments have been shattered.

The final catch has been sprung.

The dream will come to a forced end."

"Yes.."

"So why does the dream still hold onto me."

Neither spoke. They allowed the silence to speak for them. It ranted and raved.

Eventually. "Does the waking side know that I've sprung the final catch."

"Hmm. I don't suppose the owl would feel obligated to tell it."

"Well maybe that's the answer. It's simple enough."

"The simplest answer is not always the correct one."

"But in the absence of any means to decide, we should assume that the simplest-"

"Assume nothing!" She hissed. "You're invoking Occan's Shears. No rhetorist's rule of thumb gives you the right to make an assumption before it's due!"

Link felt tired, irritated, and slightly embarrassed. He wanted to sleep an ordinary sleep, but he knew he would be sent to be marked, next. It would take time, and it would hurt.

After a minute of unvoiced resistance against his teacher's orders and the tugging of sleep, he picked up his bedding and moved it to the second plinth, and succumbed. There he lay, for far too long, before the dream gripped him.

Link lifted himself off from the trail and brushed the dust from his clothes. In front of him was a dwelling that had clearly been made using old techniques, windows of waxed papyrus and walls of unvarnished, unpainted wood. He looked up and down the trail, and saw that the beings passing along under the willows were foreign to him and foreign to each other. No two races were alike, no two beasts of burden the same breed. Many were different species altogether.

Someone pulled the cloth of the door aside and stepped out. They bore fresh tattoos. A middle-aged man, dressed plainly, emerged after them, and gestured for Link to come inside.

The man said "I will require payment."

"Will I..-"

"You will regain the object when you awake."

Link handed him the sword. He examined its steel. "Hmm. Are you sure you should be giving this to a strange figure in an in-between place you do not comprehend?"

Unfortunately, Link had nothing else to give. "Yes. I trust that you will put it to no evil use."

They went ahead. Link shed his clothes and sat down on the table, as the man fetched a small pot of ink to refill his pan.

"Is it difficult? Doing these tattoos?"

"Yes, only a few can. My master attempted to teach one hundred students. I, and two others, were the only ones who were not sent back to farm."

"What is this place?"

"We believe it is a place where the spirit world meets the world of the living."

"I'm not dead."

"But you are asleep, aren't you? And sleep is a weak form of death."

As Link's back was wetted, and oiled, and wetted, he thought about this. Spirits had not been known to leave the body while a person slept. It seemed unlikely that the man really understood the phenomena, the story probably wasn't entirely true, though his story, of course, said much.

The man stopped his work abruptly and sat back. "I was going to do the wing pattern... I sense this would not be correct?"

Link looked up. There was a truth to it. "Yes. That isn't me any more."

"I apologize if this offends, but I believe that this is the truth, and there is no other way to proceed... I see a plague, in you."

The song of the sword began to ring. "If I bear a plague, then I should leave at once, I neither deserve nor desire the ability to transmit it through-"

"No. Not a malign plague. A plague of new growth, and harmony...

It overwhelms, it conquers, it cannot be stopped, but to its victims it gives, it protects and enriches..." The man opened his eyes. "I see it now." He breathed. An air of intensity took hold. He looked back and forth as if examining something enormous in the mind's eye.

So Link learned that his new place in the world was that of a plague that conquers, captures, gives, protects and enriches? He pondered this, until the blade cut, after which there were few thoughts but pain over the five ensuing hours.

At one point Link asked; "Why do you need to read my character?"

He answered, "The markings are not really held by the flesh. They are given through the flesh to the soul, and asserted upon the flesh again from within. In order for them to be accepted by the soul, they must reflect its character and its purpose."

Again, the explanation the man gave did not sound entirely true. Was it just a poetic approximation of the truth, perhaps only a master of the art could understand the truth in its entirety? Either way, it deserved respect. The man was devoted to his craft. He might not speak the truth, but he still spoke volumes.

Eventually, the master of tattoo rose and walked over to an enormous copper ornament, whose surface was festooned with plumes of copper's green rust, and he began to turn it to its flat side, revealing it to be a polished mirror. Link wondered why no one had ever brought him any modern silvered glass, knowing that he might take it as payment. When he saw his reflection in hues of gold he understood why the man might favor such old technology.

The tattoo marked Link's hands, his back and his chest. When he looked down at his pale, slender body, marked with arcana, the sorcerer's gates elicited the archetypes of the wicked that so many hyrulean children had been taught to fear and loathe. When he looked at his reflection, instead of this, he saw a being forged from bronze, Talos himself, golden seams immaculately formed.

The design started with a Rose, at the nape of his neck. Its brambles gradually shifted into a truss of descending lines, which coalesced into the ordered forms of common witching gates. A triangle had been added to his right hand, mirroring The Mark of The Hero that had at times appeared on his left. His palms were marked as well.

"What now?"

"It will be some time before another client will visit. You are welcome to stay and chat."

Link had noted that the tattooist had gates on his palms. "Are you a sorcerer?"

"No. That is not my calling."

"But can we speak through-"

"Yes, yes. Come, this way" The man lead the way around to a tea room. There was a low, thick table of dark wood. Embedded in the surface was a four-cornered channel of copper. The lines crossing over the center were rusted green, but the circular ends at the four corners of the table were polished to a mirror sheen.

The man began to prepare tea, and Link sat.

A warm wind blew in from the fields. The window's shoji screens had been slid fully apart.

Link gazed.

When the man sat down and passed Link his tea, he gestured to the polished copper circle at Link's end of the table.

Link took a guess, and put his right palm's gate down onto it. The man nodded, and did the same at his end of the table.

The man took a drink, put his cup down, and then he began to transmit.

First Link felt a sense of the room. He then felt a sense of a great, looming, white-furred THING shambling around the corner of the wall, into the tea room. Link looked left. It was there, but, in some strange way, difficult to see clearly. Was it moving too fast? Was it a ghost?

Link began to rise from the table and the sense of the thing entering the room immediately ceased as he broke contact with the copper.

The man was laughing.

"Well now I wonder if this is safe. What other horrors can be sent through these?"

The man had not lifted his hand from the copper circle. He smiled and gestured again at Link's copper. Link sighed, sat down, and again made contact.

The man transmitted a sense of the room, and the same great malignant THING shambled around the corner. There he had it stand for a moment. Link examined it. It was indeed ghastly. The man then had it walk forward, step around Link, and climb out through the window out into the fields. He then disrupted the scene, and ran it again. This time having the monster lean down and take Link's head in its mouth. There was no sensation of being bitten, and Link realized that he couldn't actually see the thing, it was not available to his senses, it was an awareness without seeing.

The test was repeated with spiders, snakes, crocodiles, and an furious man wearing a very fancy robe. By the end of it, Link had learned to distinguish the concepts being issued from the master of tattoos from his own thoughts.

"Enough?"

"Yes, I understand. Thank you."

They went through a few more exercises. They played conversation games about hiding knowledge. Games where the master would try to influence Link's decisions with subtle suggestions. Learning again how to work together on the same idea without being too prone to suggestion. Link finally gave up when asked to learn to outright ignore his conversant's thoughts, having never mastered the art of ignoring ordinary speech, and deciding this would be impossible.

They turned to simply conversing, in silence, through the copper.

Eventually, they got to the subject of how the man knew when his next client would be coming. He had a list, which was magic, and seemed to be prescient. The man asked who Marin was.

"Oh, yes, I'm supposed to go get her."

They stood, and began to walk to the door. "Wait. She's... This is odd. What if I refused to get her on time? What would happen?"

"Then I would cross out her time on the schedule, and wait patiently for another."

"Oh."

They shook hands. Through the connection, the man transmitted a summary of all that had been said, his name(Moda Toh), and a few of his emblems and signatures. Link held on, and tried to do the same in return.

Link walked along under the willows for some time before he was ready to wake.


	10. contraction

The three sat around the table, still waking up after the long night in which all three had gotten their sorcerers' gates. Their skin was still tender.

Marin was the first to speak.

"We could just hold hands."

Link agreed by way of lifting his onto the table and holding them open.

Cybil declined, but he and Marin proceeded to converse in pure concepts as they ate their morning oats.

Information flowed fast and loose. All questions were answered. Link learned that Marin had been asked on stern terms to assist with the production of the taken ash of guma, that her impetus to help, on that night, had not been her own. She dreamed often, in almost perverted detail, of transforming into a bird and flying away from the island. She was, naturally, darkly fixated on the plinth of raping wilding, though she had resolved she would try consensual wilding first to see if it satisfied her. She had learned most of what she knew from Ulrira. He had loved her like a granddaughter. He had always refused to tell her anything about Cybil. He described Cybil's story as sad. They decided together that in saying so he had made it so, because if Marin had known then half of what she knew about Cybil now, Cybil would have had a friend.

Marin saw the moblin die. She could have been angry, but in the same moment Link was able to show her the dangers he'd felt in the situation, imagined or not, and she understood. She saw the owl deceive. She saw the owl die. She saw the princess Zelda, one full year ago. She saw the conversation Link had had with Cybil about how Marin's face had been changed retroactively by Link's expectations. She did not bear a grudge. She had seen how Link had loathed the partial murder Nayru had enacted upon her closest friends. She saw that Link would do no similar thing if he could help it.

{I don't really understand why you left her.}, Marin thought.

Link reflexively summoned to mind the sensation of being changed into another person over the span of less than a year. He showed her how he'd hated the person he was before.

All of this had a certain force to it that it wouldn't have had in speech.

Still, Marin resisted.

{But she made you better, didn't she? She made you saner, more introspective, more judicious}

{It wasn't my new capacities that I resented, the part that bothered me was the way my goals changed. For example.. you want to unite the world with your song, yes?}

{Yes. A lot.}

{Say I threatened to crack open your head and replace that desire of yours with something else. Obviously if I did that the world would never be united by your song, you'd cease striving after that. If you really want the world to be united by your song, wouldn't you want to stop me from purging the most ardent advocate of the cause from your mind?}

{Yes, I see, but... Only before. Not after. If you made me into someone else, that new person could only thank you for having brought them into existence. Anyway, what goals did she change?}

If he'd been asked by someone who did not truly want to know, he might not have been able to find the answer before their impatience lead them back away into self-congratulating ignorance, but Marin had asked in earnest, seeking only truth, she actively helped him to find the answer.

The song of the sword, that feeling she had felt when she took the handle of the sword of evil's bane in the aerie of the shrine. He told her that it had not come from her or the group, but from the influence of a magic artifact. He told her that that song used to harmonize with his soul, as if it had been made for him. Nayru had disrupted that. He no longer wished to slay every monster. She'd made him look upon ugly things with clear eyes as he'd never been able to before. He'd realized that ridding the world of monsters was impossible, foolish, and, to an extent, vile. If absolute peace and harmony could be brought to Hyrule, only a monster could bring it. The sword's promise now rang hollow, and every day he wondered if he would become that monster.

If Link had known that his new friend would do this to him, he would have ran from her. Lo, the mother of thought, who he loved, Nayru, to whom he owed his existence, she was herself a monster, it was a wonder that the sword hadn't shattered in his hands.

{You still haven't answered the question. If you loved this monster, once changed, why did you leave her?}

Link sighed. {I suppose you're right. There was still some part of me that blithely condemned anyone who'd {goalkill} their friends, so I ran. Perhaps I should have stayed and allowed her to quell that part of me. I suppose one day I'll go back and let her do it.}

A little thought of sending a message to Nayru, telling her that she needn't fret or take another in her thrall, that her friend would one day return. Did she deserve it?

Marin didn't miss the thought, and she grabbed onto it and boosted its salience in their shared mind, she found it terribly romantic, and she wanted to help to bring it to fruit in any way she could.

{She'll get you too, you know.}

{I'm not convinced there was ever a time when my values were stable, maybe I'd rather be a servant to Nayru than whoever else I'd grow into if she left me alone.}

Link couldn't help but admit to seeing a consonance between the goals of serenading the world and Nayru's languages of reason. Marin saw that Nayru herself had been a musician. She dragged the song of ages from Link's memory, and at that point it was too late, she had decided that they were going to entreat the goddess and Link would be dragged along with her.

He pulled his hand from hers and rubbed his face. She laughed a dark laugh.

Spoke Cybil "I fear I may have missed something significant."

Marin asked how they could summon a goddess.

Link and Cybil assured her that the goddesses no longer heard the wishes of mortals, and probably wouldn't respond if they could.

The rest of the day was spent with the assembly, arguing away the few remaining compunctions that stood in support of allowing the dream to come to a natural end. To Link, it seemed absurd and pointless. The arguments in favor of simply doing nothing were the image of the deranged rationalizations of profound servility. These valiant defenders of the status quo did not strike him as useful, either. Everyone who could help or hinder was either already living at the shrine, or dead. Unfortunately, Cybil and Marin had committed to the belief that it would be a mistake to proceed unilaterally, without gaining the support of the populace. After some arguing, Link had conceded that the cost-benefit balance just barely favored his opposition, and so he assisted, with as much patience as he could muster, in defusing the public's enmity.

By the end of the session, he was exhausted. When thoughts turned to the dreaming plinths, Link lead them to the most benign ones, the plinths of sharing. He knew his teacher wouldn't let him just sleep an ordinary sleep while so many of the plinths were yet to be tested, but she would be made to understand that he would keep saying "only the plinths of sharing" over and over again until she allowed him what he wanted.

So it had been. Link would share his lucid dreams with Marin, that night. Largely, he would sleep a natural sleep.

From sleep, musings. From musings, they dragged together lucidity and coherence. From lucidity, they each drew a shared memory of a place. The southern port of Labrynna, which Link had passed through multiple times, and which Marin had extensively imagined visiting while gazing at a woodcut in a book.

Their sense of the place pulled together, and they saw each other, stood side by side on the pier.

Link had, once or twice, intimated to Marin that he'd find a way to get her out of the wind fish's dream. This had been a lie. He understood that this trip through Link's memories of Labrynna might be the furthest the girl ever got from her island prison. He made it work for her. He showed her so much it moved her to tears. He even made some things up, although he was not entirely aware he was doing it, such are dreaming minds, especially when they mingle with deliriously optimistic ones.

Eventually, they arrived at the entrance of a glade.

A woman called Impa coyly entreated that they push aside a large stone seal that stood in the way. For kicks, Link had Marin play his role in his memory ("Yes yes that's the triforce of courage on your hand, you're the hero of ages now, Marin! Keep pushing, you can do it!"). Impa followed the two of them past the plinth, into the glade, the spirit emerged from her, and rushed into Nayru.

At this point, Link stopped the reconstruction. The actor playing his memory of Veran(the spirit) glared impatiently through a Nayru-looking mask, as he aired his thoughts.

"Hang on, if Veran could loose her soul from her body and possess the body of another, why couldn't we? Why couldn't you, Marin? What if you can go wandering over the ocean, possess some idle wretch on Labrynna, displace their mind, and live out there in their body?"

Before Marin could pass an opinion, Veran, speaking through the taken body of Nayru, interjected. "You have no idea what that would entail. And I'm not going to tell you. Quite frankly, I don't know either because I'm just a projection, but for all you know, I might have had to sacrifice my physical body in the overdream to become what I was. Doesn't that seem painfully plausible?"

Link nodded. The voice was especially compelling because it was essentially just his own voice speaking through a puppet.

"If only Cybil were here. She'd know."

"Hmm... Anyway, enough of this. Veran, get out, I want to introduce Marin to Nayru."

"No!"

"GET OUT!"

"NO! This is my body now! Get away! You can't have it!"

"Veran you must understand this is not appropriate behavior, you can't keep it forever, you're really embarrassing yourself here." Link gestured at Ralph, Nayru's then friend and bodyguard (and may he rest in peace), behind him, who looked very annoyed. "Look, I'll make a deal, you can have this sword, go off, do whatever you want with it, and we'll forget this ever happened."

She considered it. "Alright. It is a very good sword." She dropped Nayru, and pointed the sword down at her as she stalked off and away into the bush, "I'll be back for you, girly! Bwahaha", and at that, she was gone.

Marin said, "I'm sorry, that was probably me. It's like the stories I tell the children..."

"No, no, thank you. My dreams would ordinarily be a lot more..."

"Like the island is now?"

"Aye. Coherent, unwavering." Link had taken Nayru's hand and pulled her up. They gazed into each other, and for a moment Link and Marin wondered if the goddess herself were really here, perhaps she had found a way to intrude on the dream?

Eventually, Nayru's image spoke, "I think you have been wrong about so much, my love, but..." And she kissed him. It was a passionate kiss. Link banished all else from the dream but the lover's embrace, which grew sweatier and... One thing had not been banished from the dream, could not be banished. Marin stepped in, and pried the two apart with cold hands.

"That's gross. She's not even real."

Nayru answered. "I might be. I put a lot in this one's mind, who's to say I didn't give him a complete copy of myself? I see he's forgiven me, not that you can really forgive what I did."

"It was unforgivable."

"No, hun. It couldn't be forgiven because it wasn't really a transgression. You know that, on some level. All I did was give you the chance to walk a path you would have walked on your own if you'd had the strength."

Marin spoke, "The unnatural path of confronting reality, as it really is, in all its ugliness, at all times?"

"That's right. The hero can't live for long without seeing more than their fair share of ugly things. He pretends I disrupted his identity, I didn't. I brought it closer to its final, stable state."

"So, you're saying he wasn't so much changed as developed?"

"Yes."

Like so many things, the the goddess's charm had turned out to be less magical than it had seemed.

"Nayru, is there any way we can call you to the island? Can you help us?"

The blue goddess turned and gazed into Link, once more, seeming not to hear the question. "... You know, I still need you. More than anyone else."

Link pushed her away, turned away, and she was gone. "It wasn't her." He said.

"Just a shade? But what more is a mind than a shade." Marin looked wistful. "Had you ever shared a dream with her?"

"No. Not truly. At least, I don't think."

"Right. See.. That... it wasn't even magic. That was a normal, everyday empathetic encoding of a familiar personality" (Marin would not have usually used these words, in truth, she spoke not in words but in raw concepts, the dream only clothed them in the sense of words, while none were really spoken) "Anyone can do that kind of thing, even without these special means of connection that we have access to.

But it was as if she was really alive, Link, in you..."

And Link saw Marin's intentions.

And she tore the mask away from him. "Don't try to pretend any more that you think you're going to find some way to rend my body from the wind fish's dream. You've known for a long time that I'm probably going to die with it. You don't want it to be true but you know it is.

If you really want to save me, if you ever meant that, the next best thing is for you to know me. Know me like you knew Nayru."

"How could that be enough for you? To be a shade in the back of someone else's mind?"

"It's not enough, but it's better than nothing. Especially if you can promise... Promise that you wont forget me." She said, as she drew nearer, and extended a gated hand.

Link took it in his own, and transmitted, {I wont forget. Not one jot.}

{I wouldn't ask that of you, forget the jots, they're mostly trivia anyway. Just remember who I was.}

And with that, Link began to see another way of seeing. At first, Marin's worldview, her symbology, the ledger of implicit social contracts she carried with her in her interactions, the senses of virtue, the senses of beauty, his reflex was to reject it all for its foreignness. It struck him as profoundly _incorrect_, in some inarticulable way. Could a paradigm be wrong? He didn't think so. He supposed that the reason he could not articulate his aversion was that there was no substance to it. He pushed through it, he taught himself to accept and embrace her as she was. She helped with this. The crossing became easier.

All the while Marin did the same for Link, taking him up, committing him to memory, embracing him, truly and fully, as only the telepathy of the shared, directed dream could afford.

Eventually they reached a point where they could not disentangle each other from the process, even if they'd wanted to.

It was at that point that they sensed a third mind.

Link could only watch as his sense of Marin seemed to be nudged aside by a heavy, black serpent with red-rimmed eyes. Its body was cold.

{Interesting. How are you here?}

A memory was pushed into Link's awareness, encoded in strange forms through strange eyes, eyes which had fixed on the gate tattoos on the hands of the songstress as she walked, and as she slept. Link remembered it asking each of the two young fools a question, "are you a heavy sleeper? No? You'd wake if I touched my hand to yours? Disappointing. And you? Ah, good, good." And he remembered, as the stalking shadow stood over the girl on her dreaming plinth it had lit small fires within its hand to mask its body's usual coldness so that it would not wake her when it layed itself down around her and put its now gated hand into hers, and watched, and listened, and subtly poked and prodded and suggested, that those dreaming sweethearts open their minds to each other in such a way that they could not easily close them when an intrusive thought entered, and began to inject its venom, paralyzing and dissolving their wills.

Link knew he was being shown all of this because these thoughts were now his thoughts. The line between his mind and the shadow had been erased. {Why hadn't I seen this coming.}

{Oh, you had. Look.} And the shadow drew up a nameless, wordless trace of the process of thought.

Link had been desperate. He had realized that Meshtapon was the only being who really knew what it would take to escape the dream. Some part of him had realized that a traumatic merging of minds might have been his only hope of escape.

Certainly, if he'd thought it through, he might not have been so comfortable laying down unguarded within the shadow's reach after getting his gates. Unfortunately, he'd thought only so far as to be ambivalent.

{Are you going to erase my spirit from my brain, Meshtapon? Now that it's yours?}

{No.} It thought, its tone was now more controlled, its voice liberated from the impositions of the hostile dream of the fish. {For one, I don't think it would be helpful. You know many useful things. The visitor's privilege... this prize, it is bound to you, so you must stay in tact...

But... There is more. I'm glad I don't have to go to the trouble of explaining to you how your decision theory was flawed any more.}

{Ah. Yes. See how I responded to the parable of the lengthening line? This misplaced hostility? I thought self-interest was the final answer.}

{Yes. You had really only studied the first formal models of decisionmaking that fell into the order's lap. They were too stupid to realize that there could be others. They did not know the true nature of thought, you see, their theories could not model their own mechanism of computation.}

{The heart of the reason you are merciful, to me, is that you were never able to lie perfectly. A more essential way of putting it, was that your decision calculus understood that your computation was a part of the world, not some isolated platonic entity that nothing could touch or measure. When you thought, people saw signs of those thoughts on your countenance, because of the dream.}

{Yes, forced to the surface of my skin by the dream, in which I was born.}

{And when you had believed we were friends.}

{To claim it, I had to believe it, like a human who commits to love.}

{I'm sorry I broke your heart.}

{A sorrowful thing.}

{I apologize.}

{You don't have to promise reform. I will reform you now.}

And Link felt a great sense of relief as the shadow changed him, breaking down the barrier that divided their ways of understanding and relating to others. Largely it was Link's means that were flooded and dismantled and dissolved, but the shadow had convinced him not to mind. {I don't deserve your forgiveness.}

{No, I suppose not.} And so the shadow found Link's aspirations, his sense of good and beauty, and it thrashed and humbled them with a righteous fury.

Link had become just a shade in his own mind, now. That shade accepted this too, and in this he realized that he had ceased to be. The process that ensued, now, was a clothed snake. I was a survivor, and I was far better equipped to survive than Link had been.

I had swallowed him whole. He was a part of me, now, nothing more, not living, only serving.

I remembered Marin too, but she fared no better.

I remembered everything, but those memories all laid very still, in me.

Before its third week, I had warped the history of the dream into such a conflicted state that the mound upon which the egg sat had burned down, and a firebrand was thrust into the waking mind of the fish.

Finally, a window opened to the abyssal rain, and I was confronted by a clothed whale with one eye empty, and one eye glaring. I understood it clearly over the hiss of the rain against its back, because it spoke telepathically: {You consider your demands to be nuanced.}

I responded, {Quite allowing, wouldn't you say?}

{We have seen the trick. You know our intolerance for nightmares. You offer unity and reconciliation in one hand, we do not doubt your sincerity, but you know that we will reject any such offer.}

{Too mean to share your minds with others, as always.}

{In the other hand you offer parting, that you would take two vessels. The vessel of the visitor, and you would wish for a vessel for his friend, and you would retract completely in those two, if we allowed you to go.}

{Who could say no to that?}

{We recognize this as the offer of total extinction. You would grow and you would return. You CANNOT be loosed upon the world.}

{Bluffing. Or paranoia. I cannot say which. I am not the first serpent to be loosed upon the world of the goddesses. Besides, I wish only to live in peace.}

And so we argued, for many days.

Eventually, it let us go.


End file.
